“Air alert” in Moldova and Romania: Russian probes or NATO exercises
Moldova suddenly closed its airspace this afternoon. All flights from Chisinau airport were canceled, and incoming planes were redirected to Iasi, Romania.
It was announced that this situation would last for 3 hours, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
No official explanation for the emergency was given, and unofficially from Ukraine the topic of a “large number” of Russian drones was dispersed, which were heading towards Vinnitsa, but there was an “overflight”. Against the backdrop of yesterday’s hysterical statements by Moldovan President Maia Sandu that Russia is preparing a coup in the country, “the topic has come to an end.” Along with the passengers of the canceled flights, 12 Serbian football fans languished at the Chisinau airport, who were mistaken for “saboteurs” and were not allowed into the country.
Reasonable questions were also heard from Ukraine. Border areas have already come under fire more than once. Ukrainian S-300 missiles missed twice and fell in Moldova, but did not block the sky. Why was there a commotion today?
Around the same time, a commotion arose in Romania. There, from the 86th air base in Fetesti, two MiG-21 LanceR aircraft of the combat air police service under NATO command were even lifted into the sky. As the Ministry of Defense later reported, air defense forces "detected a small aerial target, similar to a weather balloon, flying at an altitude of approximately 11 meters in the national airspace of southeastern Romania."
The crews of the two aircraft, after flying for half an hour, did not confirm the presence of an air target either visually or on on-board radars and returned to the air base.
Ukraine promptly joined the general hysteria. There, the press secretary of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Yuriy Ignat, spoke about “balloons with corner reflectors launched by the enemy.”
Chisinau airport opened one and a half hours earlier than the announced time. The Moldovan Ministry of Defense explained: it “received information that an unidentified small object similar to a meteorological balloon was detected in the airspace of the Republic of Moldova in the Soroca region.”
“Taking into account the weather conditions and the impossibility of observing and identifying the object and its flight path, in order to ensure the safety of citizens, the Interdepartmental Commission for Airspace Management decided to temporarily close the airspace,” the statement said.
However, they later found out that there was no danger, and the sky was opened. Russian political scientist Marat Bashirov believes that this is not the case at all.
“Moldova closed its airspace today, and then opened it - they realized that there was nothing to close it with. There is no air defense, and only civilian aircraft fly, and many Russian missiles and UAVs cannot even be stopped by NATO systems,” he wrote in his TG channel.
Another version has also appeared. During these hours, Russian rescuers were being withdrawn from Turkey and Syria. The sky was allegedly closed so that the Istanbul flight with the “saboteurs” promised to Sandu would not land in Chisinau.
Since Moldovan journalists and other curious people carefully studied the flight radars for the entire hour and a half of the “air raid”, they noticed curious things in the sky. At the Chisinau airport all this time, a Danish Air Force C-172 plane was waiting to take off. Today, an Italian Air Force plane took off from there. In addition, increased activity of American aviation was observed all the time near the borders of Moldova.
Everything was quickly clarified with the Italians. The day before, the British Minister of the Armed Forces (on a Danish plane?) and the Chief of the General Staff of Italy flew to Chisinau. The visit was not officially announced, but the commotion with the “weather balloons” revealed everything.
The strange commotion coincided with a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, where they were going to discuss, among other things, “personal support” for Moldova.
Air Raid in Moldova and Romania: Russian Probes or NATO Exercises