Dozens of flights were diverted or cancelled at Copenhagen airport after a number of large unidentified drones were spotted in its airspace late on Monday.
Police said they chose not to shoot down the drones over concerns that burning debris could spark fires, and they eventually flew away. The airport has since reopened.
“What we saw last night is the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date,” Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said. “We obviously do not rule out any options in relation to who is behind it.”
Without directly accusing Moscow, Frederiksen said that the incident was linked to recent Russian drone incursions in Poland and Romania, unspecified hacker attacks on European airports and what Estonia said was the violation of its airspace by Russian Mig-31 fighter jets.
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Flemming Drejer, the head of Denmark’s intelligence service, said the Nordic country was facing a “high threat of sabotage”. Jens Jespersen, a police official in Copenhagen, said that the number of drones involved, as well as their size, indicated that the incursion had been carried out by a “capable actor”. He also said the drones could have been launched from a ship off the coast of the nearby Oresund Strait, which lies between Sweden and Denmark.
Drone sightings in Oslo caused the city’s airport to close for several hours. Norwegian police have yet to comment.
The incidents came as Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow forced a plane to fly low over a residential area in an effort to avoid being targeted. Video posted to social media showed the aircraft, identified as an An–124 cargo plane — one of the world’s largest — flying just above blocks of flats on the outskirts of the Russian capital.
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@KYHorn interesting theory about trying to tie up European air defenses.