A Russian Drone Injures a Moldovan for the First Time
A drone struck the Palanca border crossing on Monday morning, damaging a passenger bus and injuring a Moldovan border police employee — the first confirmed Moldovan casualty of Russia’s drone campaign. Geolocated imagery indicates the drone ricocheted into Moldovan territory. Russian forces have been increasingly striking Ukrainian crossings with Moldova, Romania and Poland.
It is a small injury and a significant one, because it is the point at which a war fought over a border starts producing casualties on the wrong side of it, in a country that is not in NATO and cannot ask for its protection. It arrives in the same week that two drones sank a Turkish-owned ship carrying corn inside Romania’s exclusive economic zone; Volodymyr Zelensky says the captain was killed and a crew member injured, while Romanian authorities identified two dead and rescued eleven, and the vessel’s flag state is not yet clear. Assessments note Russia has been targeting civilian vessels carrying crop products specifically, which is an economic weapon rather than a military one. Ankara has said nothing about the sinking that any approved source has carried. Overnight on 4 October Russia launched 205 Shahed-type drones, 49 of them jet-powered, alongside loitering munitions and decoys, from seven locations including occupied Crimea; 172 were brought down, 13 places were struck. In Kharkiv a guided bomb killed five and injured 59 by the regional administration’s later count, higher than the figures given earlier in the day. Ukraine also says it has nearly exhausted its reserve of railway locomotives and is negotiating to buy more from countries on the same gauge. Watch whether Chisinau asks the European Union for consultations.