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Europe is under threat of a hybrid war by Russia and must rearm itself and be prepared for the possibility of an all-out conflict, Denmark’s prime minister warned on Wednesday.
Speaking before the European Union summit in Copenhagen, Mette Frederiksen said the continent was facing unprecedented danger following the spate of Russian drones that invaded NATO’s airspace last month, which experts have warned was a tactic to test the bloc’s defenses.
“I hope that everybody recognizes now that there is a hybrid war and one day it’s Poland, the other day it’s Denmark, and next week it will probably be somewhere else that we see sabotage or we see drones flying,” Frederiksen told reporters.
“I want us to rearm. I want us to buy more capabilities. I want us to innovate more, for example, on drones,” she added.
“When I look at Europe today, I think we are in the most difficult and dangerous situation since the end of the Second World War.”
Frederiksen’s warning comes as the EU mulls how to fend off Russian aggression by 2030, with intelligence services warning that Russia could be ready to mount an assault elsewhere in Europe in three to five years.
As a prep for such an invasion, EU intelligence officials and military analysts have accused Moscow of testing NATO’s defenses with the recent wave of drone and jet incursions over Poland, Denmark, Estonia and Romania last month.
While Frederiksen has stopped short of directly blaming Russia for the drones spotted over her nation in September, she said Russia remains the sole entity currently threatening the EU, requiring the continent to present “a very strong answer back.”
The incidents have pushed several EU nations to open discussions on creating a “drone wall” to protect the continent from Russia’s UAV assaults.
The drone wall would consist of a network of sensors and weapons around the European border to detect, track and neutralize unmanned UAVs entering the continent’s airspace.
“Russia will continue and we have to be ready, we have to strengthen our preparedness,” said Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, voicing his support for such a project.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who has denied Russia has been purposefully invading NATOs airspace, slammed the idea for a drone wall.
“As history has shown, erecting walls is always a bad thing,” Peskov told reporters.
With Post wires
