Fragments of a missile were found in a village in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region on Monday after a major Russian aerial attack on neighbouring Ukraine overnight, regional authorities said.
The pro-Moscow separatist region broke away after a brief civil war following the collapse of the Soviet Union and is not recognised internationally.
“An S-300 missile warhead… fell in (the village of) Chitcani, near a house, and got stuck in the ground,” Oleg Belyakov, co-chairman of a commission in charge of peacekeeping operations in Transnistria, told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
According to preliminary data provided by the demining team, it “bears the markings of a 1968 model,” he added.
Moldova said it has launched a probe.
“At this stage, neither the origin of the identified object is clear, nor is its trajectory confirmed by independent sources,” the defence ministry said.
According to local media, the missile landed on the backyard of a villager from Chitcani, who claimed he heard a loud explosion around 1:00 am and found the missile early in the morning.
Both the Ukrainian and Russian armies use Soviet-designed S-300 surface-to-air missiles.
