Denmark has accused a Russian frigate of firing two flares at one of its military helicopters over international waters in the Baltic Sea. One of the flares passed close to the aircraft, the Danish armed forces said.
The incident took place on September 14 off Gedser, at the southern tip of the island of Falster in southern Denmark. A Fennec helicopter of the Danish air force was on a routine mission to photograph the Russian warship when the flares were fired.
Neither the crew nor the aircraft was harmed, according to the Danish defence command, which issued a short statement late on September 14 and said it had nothing further to add. The frigate was not identified.
Flares are pyrotechnic devices normally used at sea as warning or attention signals.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the episode a reckless act by Russia against Danish forces during a routine flight. “Russian actions are meant to intimidate and divide. They will not succeed,” she said in a statement released by her office.
Foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said the incident was completely unacceptable and could have endangered lives. He said Denmark was working to keep shipping moving peacefully through Danish waters, though Russia was steadily shifting the line of what it considered acceptable behaviour.
The Danish foreign ministry has summoned Russia’s ambassador in Copenhagen for talks about the incident. No date for the meeting has been set.
Defence minister Jeppe Bruus told the Ritzau news agency the episode was serious and without precedent, and said it showed that Moscow’s appetite for risk had shifted. He described the conduct of the frigate’s crew as highly unprofessional seamanship.
Moscow had made no public comment by the afternoon of September 15. Its embassy in Copenhagen did not answer a request for comment from Reuters.
The waters off Gedser lie on one of the routes linking the Baltic Sea to the North Sea, used by Russian naval vessels and by tankers that Western governments associate with Moscow’s shadow fleet.
The episode follows a run of encounters between Russian forces and NATO members. Lithuania said allied fighter jets destroyed a drone that crossed into its airspace from Belarus on September 15, two weeks after Vilnius called on the alliance to answer Russian hybrid operations in the grey zone below open war.
Denmark, a member of both the European Union and NATO, has raised defence spending sharply since 2022 and has backed EU work on counter-drone systems along the bloc’s eastern flank.
US President Donald Trump said in August that Vladimir Putin would not attack NATO territory. Baltic and Nordic governments have kept their own threat assessments unchanged.
