The plane that transported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday from Moldova to Oslo, where he attended the funeral of King Harald of Norway, was nearly hit by a drone, according to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
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“His plane was almost hit by a drone during takeoff in Moldova. That is the reality he lives in,” Støre told the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK referring to the Ukrainian leader. The Scandinavian country’s prime minister did not provide further details about the incident that could have triggered a tragedy.
However, a source from the Ukrainian presidency offered a different perspective to the French news agency AFP. “It was an alert in Moldova, when a Russian drone entered the airspace of Moldova and Romania,” explained the source, who described the claim that Zelensky was in danger in that situation as “exaggerated.”
The Ukrainian leader arrived in Oslo on Tuesday night, where he met with Støre and two members of the Norwegian Cabinet, Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Foreign Affairs Minister Espen Barth Eide, to discuss civil and military aid to his country.
The President of Ukraine joined numerous foreign dignitaries yesterday afternoon to attend the funeral of King Harald V, who passed away on August 28 at the age of 89. Afterwards, he departed Norway heading to Canada, according to Støre’s statement to the NRK television channel.
Zelensky took advantage of his stay in the Norwegian capital to reproach the international community for its weak response to what he has defined as an escalation of Russian attacks against civilian targets in his country “that are claiming lives almost daily,” he stated on social media.
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“But a response is needed: Moscow cannot enter winter believing it can get away with this terror of missiles and drones without facing consequences,” Zelensky added.
Russia has intensified its offensive after a brief truce of a couple of days while U.S. envoys held meetings in Moscow and Kyiv to try to unblock peace talks.
In this new offensive, Russian drones hit a border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova yesterday, in the southern Odesa region, causing the death of two people, and attacked the country’s capital, Kyiv, during the night, according to information from Ukrainian authorities.
After the latest efforts by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s peace envoys, the U.S. president reported last Tuesday that he had demanded his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to end the war during a phone call.
Regarding that dialogue, Trump gave more details to the press yesterday and described the conversation as “excellent” and expressed his belief that the Russian leader wants to reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, which began with the Russian invasion in 2022.
