A number of drones flew in over Copenhagen Airport from several different directions late on Monday and stopped traffic for around four hours. The police describe the incident as a drone attack.
It is a very critical situation and we take it extremely seriously, says police director Anne Tønnes at a press conference on Tuesday morning.
Flemming Drejer, operational manager for the intelligence service PET, states that Denmark is under increased threat of sabotage and hybrid actions.
Someone may not want to attack us, but stress us and see how we react.
”Larger drones”
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen calls it ”the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure so far”. Given the recent attacks on European countries, she cannot ”in any way” rule out that Russia is behind it.
We have seen drones over Poland that should not be 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, she says to Danish Radio.
According to the police, it is still unclear who flew the drones. But it is a ”capable actor” with the capacity, will, and equipment to cause a greater disturbance, says police inspector Jens Jespersen on Tuesday morning. The police do not rule out a state actor.
It's about larger drones, he says.
The airport reopened shortly after midnight. Over 30 flights and around 20,000 passengers have been affected by delays.
No danger to the public
Also at Oslo's Gardermoen airport, there were reports of drones during the evening, but according to the news agency NTB, the Norwegian police have not yet confirmed it. Norwegian and Danish authorities are now cooperating, and the Danish police are also cooperating with Swedish authorities.
In Denmark, an intensive investigation is underway to find out where the drones came from and where they went. The Danish defense is also involved in the work.
No one has been in danger, according to the police.
Our assessment is that there has of course been a potential risk to air traffic. We are not aware of any concrete dangerous situation, says police inspector Jens Jespersen.
Russia?
On a question about why the drones were not shot down, Jespersen refers to safety.
Things that fall from the sky and an airport full of planes and people are a bad combination, he says.
Late at night, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyj wrote in a post on X that Russia had violated Denmark's airspace, without specifying further. On a question about Zelenskyj's statement, Jens Jespersen replies:
I can't say anything about that. Not because I don't want to, but because I don't know anything about it.
Russia denies involvement, reports AFP.
We hear unfounded accusations from there all the time, says Kremlin spokesperson Dmitrij Peskov.
