Denmark reported to Nato allies that unspecified “state actors” were responsible for drone incursions that shut two airports, Latvia’s foreign minister told Reuters yesterday, but Danish officials said it was still unclear who was behind the incidents.
The incursions forced Aalborg airport, used for commercial and military flights, to shut for three hours, while Billund airport, Denmark’s second-largest, was closed for an hour, police said. Both reopened yesterday morning.
“The Danish government said it’s a state activity that operates it,” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze said in an interview on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Danish Defence Intelligence Service chief Thomas Ahrenkiel said at a news conference yesterday evening it was still unclear who was behind the incidents and declined to say if a state actor was suspected.
However, Finn Borch, head of Denmark’s national security and intelligence service, told reporters at the news conference that Russian covert activity poses a security threat.
“The risk of Russian espionage is high. The same goes for the risk of Russian sabotage. We have seen that elsewhere in Europe, and it applies here at home as well,” Borch said.
Russia’s embassy in Copenhagen yesterday rejected as “absurd” speculation that Moscow was involved in the Danish incursions.
Denmark’s defence minister earlier said the overnight drone sorties were hybrid attacks, combining military and covert tactics, and were aimed at spreading fear.
The incident yesterday, the second this week in Denmark alone, is part of what some European officials see as a pattern of Russian disruption that has exposed the vulnerability of European airspace at a time of high tensions between Moscow and Nato.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen linked the drone incident that shut Copenhagen airport late on Monday to suspected Russian drone activities across Europe, without providing evidence.
The Latvian minister said Denmark’s allies were waiting for further analysis from Copenhagen. But the incursions have demonstrated “we all have to invest in counter-drone capability,” she said.
In yesterday’s incursions in Denmark, drones were also seen near Esbjerg and Sonderborg airports, as well as Skrydstrup airbase, home to Denmark’s F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, and over a military facility in Holstebro, police confirmed. They are all located in the western Jutland region.
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