German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had to cut short her visit of a waterworks facility in southern Ukraine on Sunday when a Russian spy drone was sighted, a Foreign Office official said.
Baerbock had been visiting the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv when members of the delegation were asked to quickly return to the armoured vehicles in Baerbock's convoy after a Russian drone was spotted flying over the area.
Such reconnaissance drones are usually followed by direct airstrikes, the official said, noting that staying on the move is the best response in such instances.
The spy drone then followed Baerbock's column before turning away. Shortly after Baerbock's column left, there was an air alert in the Mykolaiv region for around 15 minutes.
The decision to cancel the visit was made by the Ukrainian and German security teams - and not by Germany'S Foreign Office, the official said.
Baerbock already had to go to a shelter in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa on Saturday evening when air raid sirens began sounding for about 20 minutes in the city centre.
According to a dpa reporter, Baerbock was in the shelter of her hotel together with members of her delegation and other guests. People in the delegation reported that it was a rocket alarm.
An explosion was then heard in the Odessa region. It remained unclear whether there a missile hit or whether the Ukrainian air defence fended off the projectile.
Details about possible damage or casualties were not initially known. Shortly before Baerbock's visit, two Russian drone attacks had left a total of four people dead and several injured in the city of Odessa.
Earlier on Sunday, Baerbock said that Germany is to provide an additional €100 million ($108 million) in humanitarian aid to Ukraine to support the water supply, hospitals and housing.
"Putin's terror is continuing here every day," Baerbock said in Mykolaiv in reference to the Russian president.
"But the people here in Ukraine are clear: No day, no attack will be able to destroy their struggle for survival," she said.
Germany intended to promote aid for reconstruction alongside providing military assistance for defence, she said. The German government is to hold an international reconstruction conference in support of Ukraine in Berlin in June.
Mykolaiv, the capital of the region of the same name, lies around 130 kilometres to the east of Odessa and 65 kilometres from the Black Sea. Its port is Ukraine's third largest, and the city is home to a university for shipbuilding.
In the solar-powered waterworks visited by Baerbock and built by a Berlin company in Mykolaiv is a seawater desalination plant. Some 1,000 cubic meters of water are produced there every day which supply water for about 200,000 people.
Baerbock also viewed the former regional administrative headquarters in the company of Mykolaiv Governor Vitalii Kim and Mayor Oleksandr Syenkevych.
Baerbock ended her two-day visit on Sunday and was en route to Berlin on Sunday evening.
A Russian missile, believed to have been aimed at Kim, struck the building, killing 37 and injuring more than 30, at the end of March 2022, a month after the Russian invasion began. It has been left there as a memorial.
The port is out of action. In a recent report, the authorities said that more than 1,300 residential blocks and more than 1,000 private homes had been destroyed or damaged by Russian action.
