Denmark calls drone incident at its airport a 'serious attack'
The country faced a "high threat of sabotage," intelligence services said Tuesday following Monday's hours-long shutdown of Copenhagen Airport due to drone flyovers.
Danish authorities
The Danish prime minister said Tuesday that the drone overflight that led to the closure of Copenhagen Airport for several hours was "a serious attack on critical Danish infrastructure."
Mette Frederiksen mentioned that this incident coincides with recent incursions by Russian drones and aircraft into the airspace of other NATO countries and cyberattacks against major European airports over the weekend.
"I cannot rule out that it is Russia. We have seen drones over Poland that should not have been there. We have seen activity in Romania. We have seen violations of Estonian airspace. We have seen hacker attacks on European airports over the weekend," Frederiksen said in a statement.
"Now there have been drones in Denmark, and it appears that there have been drones in Oslo and Norway as well. Therefore, I can only say that, in my view, this is a serious attack on critical Danish infrastructure," the prime minister added.
"We are facing a high threat of sabotage"
"We are facing a high threat of sabotage in Denmark. Someone may not necessarily want to attack us, but rather stress us out and see how we react," Danish intelligence services operations director Flemming Drejer told a news conference.
The drones appeared from different directions and flew for more than three hours over the Danish capital's airport, where a heavy police presence was deployed.
The security force is collaborating with the military and intelligence services in its investigation.
It is also working with police in Oslo, where two drones were sighted at the airport, causing it to be shut down for several hours.
Russia denies involvement in drone flyovers
Russia denied on Tuesday being involved in the drone flyover at Copenhagen Airport that led to the hours-long closure of this infrastructure in the Danish capital.
"We hear unfounded accusations from there every time," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Alert in NATO
NATO ambassadors are meeting Tuesday at the request of Estonia, which last week claimed that three Russian fighter jets entered its airspace and were intercepted by NATO aircraft.
Previously, Poland and Romania also accused Moscow of violating their airspace with drones. In the former country, NATO defenses were mobilized to shoot down several devices.
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