Russia is waging a hybrid war against Denmark and Europe.
This was stated by the director of the Danish Military Intelligence Service (FE), Thomas Ahrenkiel, at a press conference with Danish Minister of Defense Troels Lund Poulsen.
According to him, Russia is using military means and exerting aggressive pressure, but without exceeding the limits of armed conflict in the traditional sense.
Ahrenkiel then gave some specific examples: “The Russian landing ship that had recently anchored in international waters south of the Danish island of Langeland was probably ready to intervene if we tried to prevent a Russian ship from the ‘shadow fleet’ from sailing freely.”
This is the ship Aleksandar Sabalin, which had been anchored for days off the Danish coast with its identification system turned off, until journalists from the Danish daily newspaper Ekstra Bladet spotted it from a helicopter and urged it to move, they write. foreign media.
“We also had several cases of Russian warships sailing on a collision course with our warships while we were monitoring the movement of Russian merchant ships through the Danish Straits. Likewise, helicopters and ships of our navy were targeted by target-tracking radars and weapons were directed at them by Russian warships,” explained FE director Ahrenkiel.
Danish military intelligence has also recorded that Russian warships are sailing in the Danish straits with sonar and jamming equipment and in at least one case they have most likely jammed signals and caused widespread GPS disruptions in Denmark.
Russian merchant ships were in the spotlight last week when unidentified drones appeared over six Danish airports and military bases.
Danish authorities suspect the drones were launched from Russian ships sailing through Danish territorial waters towards their Baltic ports of Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg.
“Russia has deliberately introduced drones into European airspace to test us. It wants to demonstrate military power to the West. The Russians want us to believe that there is an imminent threat of war. They even publicly say that they are at war with the West. This is part of Russia’s information war against us,” said the FE director.
However, although it wants to exploit fear and create discord, Russia does not want a direct armed conflict with Denmark, Ahrenkiel estimates: “An armed conflict is very dangerous for Russia. We believe that Russia will not carry out a conventional military attack, but is arming itself in order to eventually wage a war against NATO later.”
A Danish intelligence official also mentioned that pro-Russian hackers attacked Denmark’s water infrastructure, resulting in water pipes exploding.
He said that Danish services suffer 6,000 hacker attacks per hour.
“It is likely that Russia has concluded that it can use these instruments without the risk of escalation or retaliation. It is also likely that it believes that NATO countries are behind similar activities directed against Russia,” Ahrenkiel concluded. /Telegraph/