Suspicion of a Russian assassination attempt has emerged after it was revealed that the takeoff of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's presidential aircraft was delayed due to a Russian drone alert.

According to local Ukrainian media and Reuters on the 10th (local time), President Zelenskyy was scheduled to board his presidential plane and depart from neighboring Moldova on the 8th to visit Norway.

However, just before takeoff, an alert was issued after two Russian drones were detected in Moldovan airspace.

Ukrainian authorities immediately began tracking the movements of the drones.

While suggestions were raised to deploy F-16 fighter jets to shoot down the drones, authorities decided to monitor their movements further for the time being.

The drones, which crossed from Ukraine into the Moldovan border around 4:20 p.m. that day, entered Romanian airspace around 4:38 p.m. and returned to Moldovan airspace about 20 minutes later.

Their signals then disappeared near a village in Moldova at around 5:15 p.m.

Ukrainian authorities concluded that the drones likely crashed, and President Zelenskyy's plane took off and left Moldovan airspace at around 5:30 p.m.

Ukrainian authorities are generally cautious about overinterpreting the incident.

The Office of the President of Ukraine emphasized that "President Zelenskyy's plane and the drones were not in the air at the same time," stressing that the situation did not require an urgent response.

Some analyses also suggest that given the areas near the Moldovan border have recently faced Russian attacks, it is difficult to directly link the appearance of the Russian drones to suspicions of an assassination attempt on the president.

Recently, Russia has been intensively attacking the port of Odesa and nearby Moldovan border checkpoints to blockade Ukraine's grain export ports and the movement of export vehicles.

However, because the timing of the Russian drones' entry into Moldova practically overlapped with the takeoff time of President Zelenskyy's plane, suspicions of an assassination attempt continue to linger.

The local media outlet The Kyiv Independent analyzed, "Due to the suspicious timing of the Russian drone intrusion, concerns are being raised over the possibility that Russia may have attempted to assassinate President Zelenskyy."

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre expressed concern the previous day in an interview with Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, stating, "The moment Zelenskyy's plane was about to take off, it was nearly struck by a drone. This is the reality he faces."

Russia and Ukraine have been stepping up their offensives following back-to-back meetings by the U.S. presidential special envoy over the weekend.

The previous day, the area near a shopping center in Ukraine's Sumy region was hit by a Russian attack, leaving 2 civilians dead and 20 injured.

In the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv, attacks continued for a second consecutive day, resulting in 4 civilian deaths.

Meanwhile, Ukraine announced that it attacked gas processing facilities located in the Purovsky district and Novy Urengoy in Russia's Yamal-Nenets region, which is about 3,000 kilometers away from the border.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)