A drone crossed into Moldovan airspace early Saturday morning, Aug. 22, during a Russian aerial attack on Ukraine, NewsMaker reported. Specialized airspace monitoring services, in coordination with partners, detected the unauthorized flight at 4:07 a.m. local time.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The aircraft, preliminarily identified as a Shahed-138 (Geran-3) drone, crossed the state border from the direction of Krutoyarivka in Ukraine’s Odesa region, flying toward the Moldovan village of Caplani in the Ștefan Vodă district. The drone traversed Moldovan territory for approximately 17 minutes before leaving the national airspace at 4:24 a.m. and returning to Ukraine along the same route. The defense ministry emphasized that the unauthorized overflight occurred in the context of Russia’s air attacks against Ukraine. Intentional testing of regional response The incident is the latest in a series of drone incursions along Moldova’s border. Earlier in the week, Moldovan President Maia Sandu stated that Russia might be deliberately sending drones into the country’s airspace. During an Aug. 17 interview on Teleradio Moldova, Sandu said that the pattern of drone trajectories offers clues as to whether the airspace violations are coincidental or a deliberate test of the region’s response capacity. “Judging by the trajectory of those drones, we can say which are sent intentionally and which are there by chance,” Sandu said, noting that both scenarios violate the country’s airspace – a pattern also observed in Romania and Poland. She stated that Russia is the only party responsible for the incursions.