Moldova Nearly Matches Romania in 2026 Airspace Incidents and Has No Combat Aircraft to Respond

The Ministry of Defense of Moldova said on November 2 that the country's airspace was violated 19 times in October as a result of attacks by Russia on Ukraine, and that six drones exploded on the ground. Two days later, on November 4, an unidentified drone crossed Moldovan territory between Camenca and Vărăncău for two minutes. It is the latest Moldovan entry in GlobalMilitary.net's European airspace violations tracker.

The ministry's count and GlobalMilitary.net's incident log measure different things. The log holds only established incursions, meaning objects tracked on radar, intercepted, filmed or recovered as debris. It carries one entry per incident, so a night with several crossings can be a single entry, and it excludes unexplained sightings. That is why it holds 7 Moldovan entries for October where the ministry counts 19. The lower figure is a narrower measure, not a correction of the ministry's.

On that narrower measure, Moldova has gone in a few months from a marginal presence in the log to near parity with Romania, the country with the most entries this year. Unlike Romania, it has no combat aircraft with which to respond.

Moldova's count against the log

The log holds 143 incidents across Europe since 2022, of which 31 date from 2025 and 90 from 2026 through November 4. An earlier analysis of the 2026 log covered the increase across the continent.

Moldovan airspace accounts for one incident in 2023, two in 2025 and 31 in 2026. The year began slowly, with one entry each in March, June and July. The log then records 10 in August, 10 in September, 7 in October and one in November up to the 4th. That puts 28 of the 31 entries after August 1.

Romania has 32 entries in 2026, 19 of them since August 1, so Moldova has had more entries than its neighbor over that period. The other countries most often concerned this year are Latvia with 11, Lithuania with 7 and Poland with 4. Five of the 2026 entries involve both Moldovan and Romanian airspace, where drones crossed Moldova into Romania, and those entries count for both countries.

The ministry's own running totals are higher, in line with its broader definition. It says 67 airspace-violation incidents have been recorded since the beginning of 2026, and 104 since 2022.

What reached the ground

Of Moldova's 31 entries this year, 15 are incursions in which the object crossed and left, and 15 are strikes, in which something came down or exploded on Moldovan or neighboring soil. The remaining entry is an interception. The log's Moldovan entries since August include the following:

• August 17: an S8000 Banderol missile, attributed to Russia by authorities, crossed into Moldova and exploded near Talmaza.
• August 27: five drones attributed to Russia by authorities crossed Moldova hours before the Independence Day parade.
• September 24: a Gerbera drone, attributed to Russia by authorities, crashed and exploded at Cernița as four drones crossed northern Moldova.
• September 30: a drone struck a telecom mast and exploded at Hîrbovăț.
• October 3: three missiles and two drones exploded across four districts, according to the log.
• October 23: a Geran-4 drone, attributed to Russia by authorities, crossed northern Moldova and fell near homes at Chiștelnița.

The ministry's October release says five incidents on October 3 ended in explosions on the ground, outside the town of Căușeni and at Constantinovca, Crocmaz, Puhăceni and Dubovca, and that another drone exploded on October 16 near Scăieni, in Dondușeni District. The ministry says the month's violations took place in the Căușeni, Ștefan Vodă, Anenii Noi, Hâncești, Ocnița, Dondușeni, Telenești, Călărași, Ungheni and Edineț districts and in four localities of the Transnistrian region.

Attribution in the log follows what authorities have stated. Of Moldova's 31 entries, 15 are attributed to Russia by authorities and 16 carry no attribution. None is attributed to Ukraine. Across Europe the picture is less one-sided: of the 90 incidents logged in 2026, 39 are attributed to Russia, 38 carry no attribution, 10 are attributed to Ukraine, 2 to Belarus and 1 to Turkey. The ministry, for its part, describes the violations it counts as a result of the war in Ukraine.

An air force without interceptors

What separates Moldova from the other countries in the log is what it can do once an object is detected. Moldova's air force consists of one An-26 and two An-2 transports, according to GlobalMilitary.net's inventory data. It has no combat aircraft.

Romania's air force operates fighters that have shot drones down. The single interception among Moldova's 31 entries shows the difference. On August 16, a drone that had entered Romania from Moldova was shot down over Galați County, on the Romanian side of the border. The log holds no interception over Moldova itself.

The ministry draws its own conclusion from the October figures. Its release says the development of modern surveillance, detection and neutralization capabilities "has become a pressing necessity" for national defense.

The log's monthly counts for Moldova have been lower since the peak of August and September, at 7 in October and one in the first four days of November. The ministry's 19 violations for October, counted on its broader definition, remain the official figure for that month.