BERLIN — Chancellor Friedrich Merz suspects the Kremlin is behind a lot of the drones noticed in German airspace in current days, forcing the short-term closure of Munich Airport.
“We suspect that a good portion of it’s in all probability managed from Russia. However we’re investigating the matter, and no matter the place it comes from, it’s a critical menace to our safety,” Merz stated on public tv late Sunday.
Drones had been sighted round Munich Airport in current days, forcing authorities to shut runways and cancel flights. The cancellations stranded 1000’s of vacationers, a lot of whom had attended Oktoberfest.
The sightings got here amid a wave of drone-related disruptions plaguing Europe’s airspace. European leaders have blamed the Kremlin for violations over Danish, Estonian, Norwegian, Romanian and Polish airspace in separate incidents in current weeks.
Merz in contrast the current violations to incursions into European airspace throughout the Chilly Struggle, however these incidents, he added, didn’t happen as “regularly as now we have been experiencing in current weeks.”
“These are makes an attempt at espionage,” Merz stated. “They’re additionally makes an attempt to unsettle the general public. We all know that now we have to do one thing about this. We’ll accomplish that, however we’ll accomplish that calmly and with a way of proportion.”
European leaders final week debated a proposal by the European Fee to erect a so-called “drone wall” alongside the bloc’s japanese flank. Large member states, together with Germany and France, nevertheless, are reluctant to cede such defense-related issues to the EU, preferring to maintain nation-states and NATO in cost.
“We face a menace on a scale that now we have not seen in recent times,” Merz stated. “We’re working intensively, together with inside the European Union and NATO, to achieve choices on how you can counter this menace.”
Merz stated there’s no proof that any of the drones noticed up to now have carried weapons. A minority of the incidents, he added, concerned individuals in Germany who had been privately constructing drones in a sort of copycat crime.
A Russian overseas ministry spokesperson ridiculed Merz’s assertion that Moscow is probably going behind a lot of the drone sightings in Germany and past.
“Berlin nonetheless hasn’t discovered what occurred with the streams [Nord Stream pipelines] and nonetheless doesn’t know who blew them up,” the spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, stated Monday. “It appears like they gained’t get round to coping with drones till the following century.”
Zoya Sheftalovich contributed to reporting.