The Moldovan government filed a diplomatic protest with the country’s Russian ambassador on Monday after Russian missiles launched from warships in the Black Sea flew through Moldovan airspace in order to target Ukraine—a development that the Moldovan foreign ministry claimed was a violation of its sovereignty.

“Three cruise missiles launched on Ukraine this morning from Russian ships in the Black Sea crossed Moldova’s airspace,” Moldovan foreign minister Nicu Popescu wrote on Twitter on Monday. “I instructed that Russia’s ambassador be summoned to provide an explanation.”

Popescu’s protest came after a series of Russian strikes against civilian targets in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and other major Ukrainian cities. Russian officials have defended the strikes, describing them as retaliation for a Ukrainian attack against the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula to mainland Russia.

“Appalled by multiple Russian rocket strikes on cities across Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, striking civilian targets,” Popescu wrote on Monday. “Russia must stop killing.” He added that the Moldovan government had been in contact with its embassy in Kyiv, and they were safe, but “sheltering from these senseless attacks on civilians.”

Like Ukraine, Moldova is a former constituent republic within the Soviet Union. In 1940, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin annexed the territory, formerly a part of eastern Romania, and incorporated it into the union as the nominally independent Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1991, the territory declared its independence from Moscow but faced opposition from a majority-Russian population on the other side of the Dniester River, which declared its own independence from Moldova as Transnistria and has maintained a contingent of Russian peacekeeping troops for three decades. In the first days of the Russian invasion, some analysts feared that the Russian troops within Transnistria, which borders western Ukraine, might attempt to launch attacks from the west, although this ultimately did not occur.

Moldova’s government has aligned strongly with the West in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was granted European Union (EU) candidate status earlier in the year. Although the country’s government is strongly Western-oriented, it has faced popular discontent since the Russian invasion due to increases in gas prices, and some outside observers have speculated that the Kremlin has attempted to fuel anger within the country to undermine its leadership.

Moldovan president Maia Sandu also blasted the attacks against Ukrainian civilian targets on Monday, describing them in a tweet as “brutality, terror and killing of innocent civilians” and insisting that they “must immediately stop.”

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters.