Pro-Russian accounts are spreading a claim that Chisinau airport is a transit hub for Ukrainian drones, although Moldovan news agency IPN has shown the story was faked.

Military Summary, a pro-Russian aggregator account on X, posted on September 25 that footage showed pallets marked "Drone Coalition" being unloaded at the airport from an Antonov An-22 belonging to "CAVOC Air" straight into a truck with Kharkiv licence plates. "Moldova is effectively operating as a logistical hub for supplying the Kyiv regime," the account said. Russian aggregator site pressa24.ru ran the same text the same day.

Moldova's constitution makes it a neutral state, and Moscow regularly accuses Chisinau of militarising the country as it takes Western security aid such as the €120mn the EU allocated in July for its air defence. The fake appeared hours before four Russian drones crossed Moldovan airspace on September 24, one of which, with features police say match a Russian Gerbera, crashed and exploded near the village of Cernita in Floresti district. Moldova's Centre for Strategic Communication and Countering Disinformation warned on September 21 that drone incidents, which have become more frequent, are followed by propaganda that blames the victim for what the aggressor has done.

The story first appeared on the Telegram channel SPPOT at 18:36 on September 23 with three photographs, and within two hours had been reposted by 22 pro-Russian channels aimed at Moldovan audiences, among them KP Moldova, Sputnik Moldova and Gagauznews, IPN reported.

IPN identified the aircraft in the pictures as an Antonov An-12BP, registration UR-CBG, operated by Kyiv-based cargo carrier Cavok Air. The news agency cited Flightradar24 data showing it flew from Bratislava to Casablanca on September 23, landing at 12:26 UTC, so it was on the ground in Morocco, more than 2,700 km from Moldova, when the post went up. This conflicts with the later Military Summary account, which described an An-22 and called the airline “CAVOC Air”.

IPN reported that the truck’s Ukrainian plate, AX 0435 AO, carries the Kharkiv region code but belonged to a MAN lorry until 2017 and then to a Volkswagen Transporter van. It also said four AI-detection tools gave a 94-97% probability that the image had been created or modified with AI. The boxes labelled “Drone Coalition” were cropped from a 2024 press release by Latvia’s Defence Ministry, IPN reported.

The Drone Coalition is a group of countries led by the UK and Latvia that pools money to buy drones for Ukraine. Its members pledged in July 2024 to help deliver 1mn FPV drones.

By 22:00 on September 23 SPPOT's administrator had posted a retraction, saying the channel had been misled and "used to spread hybrid disinformation", and that sources inside Chisinau airport had denied that any such flight or unloading took place.

Moldovan officials have not addressed the airport claim publicly. "Russia's massive attack on Ukraine reached Moldova again this morning: four Russian drones violated our airspace," President Maia Sandu said on September 24, while the Foreign Ministry demanded that Moscow stop actions threatening Moldova's security, IPN reported.

Prime Minister Vasile Tofan said in New York on September 25 that Moldova sees no imminent Russian invasion and will keep its constitutional neutrality, while accusing Russia of using drones crossing the country to test Nato. More drones crossed Moldova in August than in the whole of 2025, he said.