India, Sept. 10 -- The departure board at Chisinau International Airport had already moved past the scheduled flight slot when Moldovan air traffic control went silent. At 4:20 p.m. on September 8, Moldova's military detected an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle moving through the country's airspace. The aircraft carrying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Oslo remained on the tarmac as authorities tracked the drone's trajectory.

The extent of the incident became public only after Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told NRK, Norway's state broadcaster, that Zelenskyy's aircraft had come close to being struck. His disclosure transformed what had initially appeared to be a routine airspace closure into one of the more di...