Reports of drones flying over European airspace have skyrocketed in the last few months. We take a look at which countries have seen drones and where.
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At least 10 European countries have seen mysterious drone incursions in the last few months.
Lithuania, Latvia, Denmark, Norway, Romania, Poland, Estonia, Germany and France have seen drones or disruptions over their territory in the past three months.
Denmark temporarily banned all commercial drone flights throughout the country on 29 September. While the European Union has formally launched a drone wall initiative along the eastern border with Russia and NATO said it is increasing its vigilance in the Baltic states.
Here’s what’s been spotted so far and where.
Lithuania
On 28 July, Lithuanian authorities reported that a drone had crossed into their country from Russia.
The country’s defence minister Dovile Sakaliene said the drone was likely directed from Russia towards Ukraine but unintentionally carried into their territory.
The drone was found a few days later, armed with explosives in a military training area, according to Lithuania’s prosecutor-general Nida Grunskiene. That came after a separate incident where a Russian drone entered Lithuanian airspace on 10 July.
Lithuania asked NATO to help bolster its air defences, with foreign minister Kęstutis Budrys and NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte agreeing to “immediate steps to strengthen air defence along NATO’s frontline”.
Poland
On 9 September, at least 19 Russian drones flew over Poland’s airspace in what the country’s central command called an “act of aggression”.
Polish armed forces shot down the drones that “repeatedly violated” the country’s skies overnight, which marked the first time that the country has directly engaged with Russian assets since the start of the full-scale invasion in Ukraine in February 2022.
After the drone sightings, the Ukrainian Armed Forces said they will be training their Polish colleagues in anti-drone tactics.
Poland also deployed allied aircrafts in a brief preventative operation on 13 September because of drone strikes in neighbouring parts of Ukraine.
In another incident on 15 September, a drone was seen flying over the Belvedere presidential palace in the capital, Warsaw and was neutralised by the Polish State Protection Services.
Poland detained a 17-year-old Belarusian woman and a 21-year-old Ukrainian man in connection with flying drones over government buildings on September 16th. Polish police investigated their homes and verified whether they could stay in Poland legally.
Romania
On 8 September, a Russian drone violated Romanian airspace during nighttime attacks in Ukraine, which forced the national military to deploy F-16 fighter aircrafts to monitor the country’s airspace.
A statement from the Romanian Ministry of National Defence sent “a firm message of condemnation” for the attacks carried out by Russia against Ukrainian “civilian targets and infrastructure elements,” which it called a “serious contradiction” of international law.
On the same day, another drone crashed in the eastern part of Latvia that came from Belarusian airspace.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said on social media platform X that Latvia is conducting an investigation and "the government is in close contact with its NATO allies".
Another incursion in Romania happened on 13 September, when Romania’s defence ministry said it detected a Russian drone while two F-16s monitored the Romanian border with Ukraine.
The BBC identified the drone as a Geran, the Russian name for a Shahed 136 kamikaze drone, which is being used by the Russians for attacks on Ukraine.
It was detected 20 kilometres in front of the village of Chilia Veche before disappearing from the radar, the defence ministry added.
Romanian officials said it did not fly over populated areas or pose any danger.
A recently passed law in Romania gave officials the authority to shoot down the drone but they did not do so.
Denmark and Norway
Last week, drones were spotted over five Danish airports: Copenhagen, Aalborg, Billund, Esbjerg and Sonderborg in what authorities say was a coordinated attack. Both Copenhagen and Aalborg airports were shut down for several hours in response to the drones.
Danish and NATO authorities said it wasn’t immediately clear who was behind the drone flights but said that Russian involvement couldn’t be ruled out.
Danish authorities say they considered invoking NATO’s Article 4, like the Poles did, because it was a hybrid attack with a “systemic approach” near critical infrastructure, according to Troels Lund Poulsen, Denmark’s deputy prime minister.
Airspace around Norway’s Oslo airport was closed for roughly three hours on 23 September, according to Reuters, because of drone sightings, causing flights to be diverted to the nearest airport.
Norwegian and Danish authorities are working together on investigating the incidents in Copenhagen and Oslo but have not yet established a connection between them, according to Norway’s foreign minister.
Denmark’s defence ministry then said on 28 September that it had observed drones at several armed forces locations the day before, including at the Skrydstrup Air Base in southern Denmark, and the Jutland Dragoon Regiment base.
The ministry said it deployed several “capacities” after it spotted drones from Saturday into Sunday night, but didn’t detail how many were deployed or where.
Hundreds of public sightings have also been reported that have not yet been confirmed by authorities as suspicious, according to the Associated Press.
In preparation to host the European Union Summit in Copenhagen, the government said that it will stop all civilian drone flying from Monday to Friday of this week to “remove the risk that enemy drones can be confused with legal drones and vice versa”.
Germany and Sweden are also supporting the country during the summit by lending it anti-drone capacities such as the “counter-small unmanned aircraft systems capabilities (C-sUAS)”, which use radar, optical and acoustic technologies.
France
French military officials told local media that unidentified drones flew over France's Mourmelon-le-Grand military base overnight on September 22nd.
The small aircrafts that were spotted over the military base were not “drones piloted by military personnel,” the departmental military delegation told the French newspaper L’Union.
French officials did not disclose the types of drones used but said that they were not “small drones,” the media outlet reported.
The siting triggered increased security measures at the warehouse on the base that houses France’s 501 tank regiment that has trained Ukrainian soldiers, local media reported.
The newspaper said that the base filed a complaint with France’s gendarmerie, which is leading an investigation into where these drones came from.
Germany
On 26 September, the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which borders Denmark, spotted several drones.
“State police are currently significantly stepping up their drone defence measures, also in coordination with other northern German states,” said Sabine Sütterlin-Waack, the state's interior minister.
A recent report from Germany’s national air navigation service (DFS) said it has logged 144 drone overflights this year, with 35 around Frankfurt Airport.
Around 90 per cent of the flights recorded were around airports and were mostly discovered by pilots or air traffic controllers, DFS told Euronews earlier this month.
It’s not clear, according to the report, how many of these drones were being used for espionage.
