Denmark says airport drone flights designed to create fear

COPENHAGEN: Denmark said onThursday that drone flights over multiple airports this week were a 'hybrid attack' designed to create fear, adding it would acquire new capabilities to detect and intercept drones.
Police said drones flew over several airports across the country and caused one of them to close for hours, after a similar incident early this week prompted Copenhagen airport to shut down.
'The aim of this type of hybrid attack is to spread fear, create division and frighten us,' Denmark's Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said.
He added that Copenhagen would acquire new enhanced capabilities to 'detect' and to 'neutralise drones'.
The drone flights follow similar incidents in Poland and Romania and the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets, which have raised tensions in light of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Thursday that she had spoken with Nato chief Mark Rutte about the incidents. Rutte said afterwards he was taking the drone flights 'very seriously'.
Hummelgaard said Copenhagen was 'not ruling out anything in terms of who is behind this.'
Moscow said onThursday it 'firmly rejects' any involvement in the Danish incidents.
'It is evident that the incidents involving reported disruptions at Danish airports are a staged provocation,' Russia's embassy in Copenhagen said in a post on social media.
Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told a press conference that 'there can be no doubt that everything points to this being the work of a professional actor when we are talking about such a systematic operation in so many locations at virtually the same time,' but he underscored there was 'no direct military threat' to Denmark.
Lund Poulsen said the government had yet to decide whether to invoke Nato's Article 4, under which any member state can call urgent talks when it feels its 'territorial integrity, political independence or security' are at risk.
Copenhagen is set to host next week's summit of European Union leaders.
Drones were spotted on Wednesday and early on Thursday at airports in Aalborg, Esbjerg, Sonderborg and at the Skrydstrup air base before leaving on their own, police said.
Aalborg airport, located in northern Denmark, was shut down for several hours.
'It was not possible to take down the drones, which flew over a very large area over a couple of hours,' North Jutland chief police inspector Jesper Bojgaard Madsen said about the Aalborg incident. - AFP