COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Europe must take a more aggressive approach with Russia by shooting down drones that enter European airspace and boarding shadow fleet ships illicitly transporting oil to deprive Moscow of war revenue, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.
Speaking at a European summit in Copenhagen, Mr. Macron and other European leaders called for more sanctions against Russia - notably targeting its energy sector — and emphasized that Ukraine is on the front line in a widening hybrid war against Europe.
Indeed, the positions of some of Europe’s leaders toward the continuing drone incidents, acts of sabotage, cyber-attacks and sanction-busting appear to have hardened over two days of talks in Copenhagen, including a closed session among them without phones or advisors.
Mr. Macron urged the more than 40 leaders at the European Political Community summit to simply protect their interests without signaling their intentions to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I think the main answer should be more unpredictability and more strategic ambiguity,” he said.
“It’s very important to have a clear message: drones which would violate our territories are just taking a big risk. They can be destroyed, full stop,” he said. “We are not here to provide the full notice. We will do what we have to do.”
Mr. Macron’s comments came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s power grid are compromising the safety of the country’s nuclear facilities.
Neither shuttered Chernobyl plant, the site of Europe’s biggest nuclear disaster, nor the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are working, but they require a constant power supply to run crucial cooling systems for spent fuel rods in order to avoid a potential nuclear incident.
A blackout could also blind the radiation monitoring systems, installed to boost security at Chernobyl and operated by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
“Russia is deliberately creating the threat of radiation incidents,” Mr. Zelenskyy said late Wednesday, criticizing the U.N. nuclear watchdog and its chief Rafael Mariano Grossi for what he described as weak responses to the danger.
“Every day of Russia’s war, every strike on our energy facilities, including those connected to nuclear safety, is a global threat,” he said. “Weak and half-measures will not work. Strong action is needed.”
Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said the situation is unprecedented. “No nuclear power plant in the world has ever operated under such conditions, and it is impossible to make any reliable forecasts,” it said in a statement to The Associated Press.
At the meeting of European leaders in Denmark, Mr. Macron pointed to a decision by French authorities to stop an oil tanker on the European Union’s shadow fleet sanction list, and detain two of its crew, as an effective way to act. Naval experts believe the ship may have been involved in drone flights over Denmark.
He said that Russia finances 30 to 40% of the war effort against Ukraine via the shadow fleet.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who hosted the summit days after a series of drone incidents at Denmark’s airports and military bases, said: “It must be clear to everyone now, Russia will not stop until they are forced to do so.”
Russia, she said, is “a threat not only to Ukraine but to all of us. Today, we have one major task ahead of us. We have to make our common Europe so strong that the war against us becomes unthinkable, and we have to do it now.”
Ms. Frederiksen warned her partners that Europe “can no longer be naive. The war was never just about Ukraine. It is about Europe. All our nations, all our citizens, our values and our freedom.”
After the meeting, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “Putin should not underestimate our determination. There is truly a very strong unity and there is a very firm resolve to confront this aggression together and for that I am extremely grateful.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk urged the leaders to abandon any “illusions” they might have about Russia’s intentions. He said that Poland has been a constant victim of Russian intimidation, most notably a major drone intrusion last month.
Poland has since vowed to shoot down Russian drones that enter its airspace.
“The first illusion was, and is, that there’s no war,” Mr. Tusk said, referring to those who talk about the war in Ukraine as a “full-scale aggression” or use other euphemisms. “No. It’s war. A new type of war. Very complex, but it’s war.”
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