Missile downed by Ukraine crashes across international border – interior ministry

A missile crashed in a Moldovan community near the country's border with Ukraine on Monday, after being hit by Kiev’s air defense forces, the country’s interior ministry has reported.

The incident happened in the village of Naslavcea in northern Moldova, the ministry said. There were no reports of casualties on the ground, but some windows were shattered, it added.

The Moldovan ministry cited claims by Ukrainian officials, who said the premises of the nearby Dniester Hydroelectric Station, around 10km northwest of the village, was the subject of a Russian attack.

The statement stressed that the Ukrainian plant’s dam was not under threat. The Dniester River, on which the hydropower facility is located, originates in Ukraine, but flows along the border with Moldova from a point near Naslavcea and goes through Moldova further downstream.

The Moldovan Defense Ministry promised an investigation into the incident. It said the military had not detected any violations of the national airspace and suggested that the size of the missile debris was too small for radar systems to detect.

Ukrainian officials reported Russian strikes on Monday morning throughout the country. Mayor of Kiev Vitaly Klitschko said 80% of consumers in the city had been left without water, while 350,000 apartments had no power. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that Ukrainian energy infrastructure had been targeted, stating that it had achieved all its goals with the attack.

Spillovers from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine are not unprecedented. In March, a drone crashed in the Croatian capital of Zagreb after flying unimpeded from Ukraine through Romanian and Hungarian airspace.

The aircraft, the origin of which was never confirmed by the parties involved, crashed in a sport and leisure park not far from a student dormitory and caused no casualties. The drone is widely believed to have been a Ukrainian Tu-141, an old Soviet design.

Moscow started targeting energy infrastructure earlier in October, stating that Kiev had opened the door for such action by launching a number of “terrorist” operations against civilian targets in Russia. The change of tactics followed a deadly truck bomb on the Crimean Bridge, which Moscow blamed on the Ukrainian military intelligence service.