Russia is “actively” preparing sabotage operations against Denmark, particularly its defense industry, the head of the Danish intelligence service was quoted as saying yesterday.
The warning came after EU countries summoned Russia’s envoys and discussed fresh sanctions after an explosive-laden drone incident in Germany that the bloc’s foreign policy chief said bore the marks of “state-sponsored terrorism.”
Russia has in the past few months been accused of ratcheting up sabotage attacks against European backers of Ukraine.
Photo: Reuters
“The Russians are actively preparing sabotage operations targeting the defense industry in Denmark,” Emil Graesholm, head of counterintelligence at the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, said in an interview with newspaper Berlingske.
“It is fundamentally important that the defense industry, in the broad sense, take the necessary security measures so that it is able to protect itself,” Graesholm told broadcaster TV2. “Many actors in the sector are already actively working on this.”
Russian security services are seeking to recruit “completely ordinary Danes” for missions, he said.
The missions might, for example, involve taking photographs, and checking and reporting on access and security conditions around a facility, he said.
“We are talking about the methods, because they don’t need to look like a spy movie,” he told Berlingske.
Separately, Norwegian authorities on Wednesday seized a Russian vessel — the Professor Molchanov — in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard at the request of Ukraine’s Naftogaz as part of a global effort to enforce a US$4.22 billion arbitration award stemming from Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and its seizure of Ukrainian energy assets.
In 2023, an arbitration tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, ordered Russia to pay US$4.22 billion to the Ukrainian state-owned energy company for unlawfully seizing its assets in Crimea.
After Russia’s refusal to pay the award, Naftogaz has been petitioning national courts seeking court orders to seize Russian commercial assets.
“This is another important step towards restoring justice for Russia’s unlawful seizure of Naftogaz assets in Crimea. Russia cannot evade responsibility simply by refusing to comply with an international arbitral award. We will continue to pursue Russian assets around the world,” Naftogaz chief executive officer Sergii Fedorenko said.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday called the seizure “piracy.”
Russian Minister for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic Alexei Chekunkov said that Moscow would challenge the ruling, saying the seizure of the vessel was “another example of Western countries’ legal nihilism and lawlessness,” Interfax news agency reported.
Additional reporting by AP and Reuters
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