According to French President Emmanuel Macron, Paris authorities have stopped a tanker that they claim was involved in the recent drone flights over Denmark—erroneously blamed on Russia. “We were able to stop it,” Macron said Sept. 30 on the sidelines of a summit of EU heads of state and government in Copenhagen. “There were some very serious misconducts on the part of the crew, which is why there is a court case in this case.” He did not provide further details.
The tanker sails under the flag of Benin and is on a list of ships affected by EU sanctions against Russia. According to the website “Marine Traffic Monitoring,” it left the Russian oil terminal in Primorsk near St. Petersburg on Sept. 20, was off the Danish coast last week, and has been off the coast of Saint-Nazaire in western France since Sept. 28. Drones were repeatedly sighted near airports in Denmark last week, leading EU leaders to claim that these originated in Russia, though without providing any hard evidence for that claim.
