Red Horizon Leg 3

Leg 3 — UKLN → LUKK Chernivtsi, Ukraine → Chișinău, Moldova

A hurried evacuation and liaison flight transporting diplomats and intelligence officers away from collapsing frontier sectors.

Shattered Maps

By the third leg, certainty had disappeared completely.

Conflicting reports flooded every operations room:

airborne assaults near major cities, bridges destroyed overnight, entire units cut off, unidentified aircraft operating without transponders.

Nobody trusted the maps anymore.

Flying south toward Moldova, you crossed low over the Carpathian foothills beneath gathering storm systems. Smoke columns rose intermittently across the countryside where fuel depots and infrastructure burned through the morning.

Chișinău Airport operated under armed guard while diplomats, intelligence personnel, and military coordinators attempted desperately to determine which reports were real… and which were panic.

Then came the first confirmed airspace warning.

Hostile aircraft operating farther west than expected.

The war was expanding already.