Apparently, the Moldovans are getting sick of it.

Back in September, I noted that the war in Ukraine that supposedly doesn’t directly involve neighboring countries keeps spilling over into those member countries, including some members of NATO. When you have that many drones, missiles, aircraft, and other stuff flying around, some of it is going to get blown up with debris landing on the wrong side of the border.

Apparently, the Moldovans are getting sick of it, and they summoned the Russian ambassador to the Moldovan Foreign Ministry – where he was greeted by a conference table laid out with drone parts.

There’s something delightful about the ambassador’s expression, as he realizes the usual “those aren’t ours” defense isn’t likely to work with the visible Russian lettering on the parts.

The Moldovans are making a few more moves to tell the Russians that continued violation of sovereign airspace will have consequences:

Moldova’s foreign ministry summoned the head of the Russian diplomatic mission in its capital, Chisinau, and condemned the “unacceptable violations” which “represent a serious threat to national security and the citizens” of Moldova. The ministry also presented the Russian diplomat with fragments of the drones “as concrete evidence” of the violations.

The ministry separately terminated a 1998 Moldova-Russia agreement on cultural centers and said that “the Russian Cultural Center is to cease its activity in our country.”

I know this is going to shock you, but apparently some of the Russians who enter a country to work in a Russian Cultural Center turn out to be spies. Back in 2018, the Trump administration gave an expulsion order to Oleg Zhiganov, the director of the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, with the declaration, “the individuals who are being sent back to Russia are intelligence officers being cloaked by their diplomatic positions here in the U.S., and are considered to be aggressive collection personnel.” The previous head of the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, Yury Zaytsev, was also investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Russian spy. As Connor Simpson wrote back in 2013, “if a Russian diplomat offers a young, up-and-coming professional in Washington an all-expenses paid trip to the mother country, complete with fancy hotels, drinks, and meetings with Vladimir Putin’s political underlings, well, that guy just might be a spy.”

Similar concerns have been raised about Russian Cultural Centers in Berlin and Paris.

Moldova is not a NATO member but has a well-established “partnership” with NATO. The Moldovans have a particular bone to pick with Russia, over Transnistria, a breakaway region that claims to be an independent state, but that almost the entire rest of the world considers to be Moldovan territory with a lot more hammers and sickles on its government buildings.

Back in 2023, I visited that rogue territory that I would compare to a surreal Soviet Disneyland. Transnistria is yet another Russian-influenced “frozen conflict” zone and disputed territory, a sliver of land in a narrow valley stretching north–south along the bank of the Dniester river, with Moldova on one side and Ukraine on the other.

Earlier in 2023, the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, accused Vladimir Putin of attempting to overthrow the government by fomenting violence through foreign actors and internal criminal groups.