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    Hybrid attacks such as drones ‘part of new reality’, Danish minister warns, as Russia embarks on huge army call-up – Europe live | Europe

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    Hybrid attacks such as drones ‘part of new reality’, Danish minister warns, as Russia embarks on huge army call-up – Europe live | Europe


    Hybrid attacks ‘part of our new reality’ like terrorism after 9/11, Danish justice minister warns

    Miranda Bryant

    Nordic correspondent

    Denmark’s justice minister has compared the recent spate of hybrid attacks on Europe to 11 September 2001, saying that they have “become part of our new reality”.

    Peter Hummelgaard told a press conference:

    Just as the terrorist threat became part of our reality after 11 September, hybrid attacks have become part of our new reality.

    He added: “We are in a new reality in Denmark and in other countries, and we will find ourselves in such a situation again. This is what hybrid warfare is like.”

    It comes as countries including Denmark’s close Sweden pledged assistance in defending from drones.

    The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, who is also holding a press conference at the same time as the Danish one, said: “Knowingly or unknowingly, drone attacks are affecting Denmark’s ability to hold the EU summit on Wednesday.”

    Kristersson also said that alleged hybrid attacks on Poland, Estonia and Denmark could “just as likely have happened in Sweden, and could happen in Sweden.”

    The Swedish foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said the region now faced a “very serious security situation”, meaning it was vital to have “close relations with our neighbours”.

    Sweden has sent anti-drone equipment to Denmark. Swedish and Norwegian police will also work with Danish police during the summit.

    Denmark’s minister of emergency situations, Torsten Schack Pedersen, said that a bill is on its way to the Danish parliament, Folketing, relating to neutralisation of drones.

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    Updated at 15.05 CEST

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    German man finds €15m winning ticket in coat six months after winning lotto lottery

    And for something a bit more optimistic, let me bring you this story from Frankfurt, Germany, about a German man who has won €15.3m in the lottery after discovering a forgotten ticket in his coat pocket six months after he bought it, reported by AFP.

    The father from the Frankfurt area had remained oblivious to his winnings all spring and summer despite a poster campaign to find him, the Lotto Hessen company said.

    The man had even heard about the campaign to find the lucky winner.

    “I heard about it on the radio at the time and thought to myself, ’How stupid can you be not to collect it?’”, he said. “It never occurred to me that I could be the person they were looking for.”

    With the weather turning chilly in Germany, the man reached for a jacket he had not worn since March – to discover the ticket in his pocket.

    “When I checked the numbers on my phone and saw the winning amount, I was completely shocked – luckily I was sitting down, otherwise my knees would have given way.”

    The man plans to spend his winnings on, erm, a new living room sofa.

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    The pro-European party won Moldova’s election but obstacles to join the EU remain – analysis

    Jennifer Rankin

    in Brussels

    In the end, the results were better than Moldova’s western allies had dared hope. In Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the pro-EU party of president Maia Sandu won a convincing victory, confirming the westward path of this former Soviet republic of 2.4 million people.

    Moldovan President Maia Sandu arrives to address the media following the parliamentary election, in Chișinău, Moldova. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

    For Sandu, a former World Bank official who was re-elected Moldova’s president in 2024, it is an emphatic victory. With a secure parliamentary majority, rather than the divided coalition many pollsters had predicted, it should be easier to push through the demanding political and economic reforms required to join the union.

    It was an equally important result for the EU, which has invested political capital in Moldova. The European Commission has pledged €1.9bn (£1.7bn) in grants and cheap loans to Moldova to build infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals and internet cables to boost the economy and speed its arrival into the European single market. Last month, the leaders of Germany, France and Poland made a high-profile joint visit to Moldova on the anniversary of its independence to express solidarity.

    But sighs of relief are tempered by understanding that this is only one chapter in a long story. “The fight is not over,” Moldova’s former prime minister Natalia Gavrilița told a security conference in Warsaw on Monday. “Of course, we are very determined to carry out the reforms with all the challenges and capacity constraints and so on,” she said.

    Moldova is pressing ahead with the ambitious goal of joining the EU by 2030. It is a high bar. During the past 18 years the EU has admitted only one country, Croatia, amid widespread mistrust of the enlargement process in western Europe, especially France, Denmark and the Netherlands.

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    Environmental damage is putting European way of life at risk, says report

    Ajit Niranjan

    Europe environment correspondent

    The European way of life is being jeopardised by environmental degradation, a report has found, with EU officials warning against weakening green rules.

    A forest fire on the Greek island of Euboea. In a report on the natural environment, EU officials said the climate crisis was a danger to prosperity. Photograph: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images

    The continent has made “important progress” in cutting planet-heating pollution, according to the European Environment Agency, but the death of wildlife and breakdown of the climate are ruining ecosystems that underpin the economy.

    “We are struggling to meet our 2030 targets in many areas,” said Leena Ylä-Mononen, the executive director of the agency. “This is, basically, putting at risk the future prosperity, competitiveness and quality of life of Europeans.”

    The warning comes amid a rollback of green rules as far-right parties that deny the science of climate change gain ground across the continent. The US has also put pressure on EU leaders to buy its fossil fuels and ditch pollution standards that affect imported goods.

    The report paints the most comprehensive picture yet of Europe’s environment, though lengthy verification processes mean the most recent data for some issues dates as far back as 2021. It found only two of 22 specific policy targets for 2030 – greenhouse gas emissions and ozone-depleting substances – were “largely on track”. Nine were “largely not on track”, with the rest showing a mixed trend.

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    Sleeper train revival hit by French subsidies cut

    In other news, Europe’s sleeper train revival was dealt a setback as operators said services linking Paris with Vienna and Berlin will end 14 December after France cut vital subsidies, AFP reported

    The Paris-Vienna and Paris-Berlin routes had been relaunched in 2021 and 2023 to fanfare as part of a wider effort to bring back night trains as a lower-emission alternative to short-haul flights.

    They attracted steady demand, averaging 70 percent occupancy this year, according to French state rail firm SNCF, which operated the routes with Austria’s ÖBB and Germany’s Deutsche Bahn.

    But it was an expensive endeavour: unlike daytime trains, in which a seat can be resold to several passengers along a multi-stop route, a sleeper berth generates revenue from only one traveller per journey.

    Higher staffing requirements and locomotive changes at border crossings further raised expenses.

    The end of the line for the service was the termination of an annual French subsidy of about €10m ($11.7m).

    The service is “not economically viable without state subsidies”, SNCF said in a statement.

    Operating night trains is indeed a huge economic challenge.

    ÖBB said in a statement that its French partner SNCF had been informed by the French transport ministry that “government service orders for the operation of (both) night trains… will be discontinued in 2026”.

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    Denmark buying, leasing additional anti-drone equipment to protect EU summits this week

    Miranda Bryant

    Nordic correspondent

    Denmark is buying and leasing anti-drone equipment from other countries ahead of this week’s EU summits.

    The Danish defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said:

    “In addition to working closely with our allies (15:03), the Ministry of Defence’s Material and Procurement Agency has initiated the purchase and leasing of additional equipment, which will be delivered either today or shortly, so that it can strengthen our preparedness in general.”

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    Putin orders biggest autumn army call-up since 2016

    Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday called up 135,000 men for routine military service, the country’s biggest autumn conscription drive since 2016, AFP reported.

    Russian president Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, left, and Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, right, inspects weapons and equipment during a visit to the “Zapad 2025” (“West 2025”) military drills at the Mulino training ground in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Russia. Photograph: Sergey Bobylev/AP

    Russia calls up men aged between 18 and 30 for compulsory military service each spring and autumn.

    AFP noted that Russia’s annual conscription campaigns are unrelated to mobilisation, in which Russian men are drafted to fight during wartime.

    Conscripts are expected to serve for a year at a military base inside Russia, not to fight in Ukraine, although there have been reports of conscripted men being sent to the frontline.

    This is the biggest autumn conscription drive since 2016, and, combined with the 160,000 called up in the spring, means 2025 is set to be the largest total call-up since that year too, AFP said.

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    Britain may already be at war with Russia, former head of MI5 says

    Dan Sabbagh

    Defence and security editor

    Britain may already be at war with Russia because of the depth and intensity of cyber-attacks, sabotage and other hostile activity orchestrated by Moscow against the UK, according to a former head of MI5.

    The aftermath of a 2024 arson attack ordered by Moscow on a warehouse in east London that was storing supplies destined for Ukraine. Photograph: London Fire Brigade/PA

    Eliza Manningham-Buller, who led the domestic spy agency two decades ago, said she agreed with comments made by the Russia expert Fiona Hill, who argued in a Guardian interview earlier this year that Moscow was at war with the west.

    Lady Manningham-Buller argued that the situation had changed “since the invasion of Ukraine and the various things I read about that the Russians have been doing here – sabotage, intelligence collection, attacking people and so on”.

    Speaking on a podcast in which she was interviewed by the lord speaker, John McFall, she then referenced Hill, who advised Donald Trump during his first term as US president and co-authored the UK’s strategic defence review.

    “I think she may be right in saying we’re already at war with Russia. It’s a different sort of war, but the hostility, the cyber-attacks, the physical attacks, the intelligence work is extensive,” she said.

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    Hybrid attacks ‘part of our new reality’ like terrorism after 9/11, Danish justice minister warns

    Miranda Bryant

    Nordic correspondent

    Denmark’s justice minister has compared the recent spate of hybrid attacks on Europe to 11 September 2001, saying that they have “become part of our new reality”.

    Peter Hummelgaard told a press conference:

    Just as the terrorist threat became part of our reality after 11 September, hybrid attacks have become part of our new reality.

    He added: “We are in a new reality in Denmark and in other countries, and we will find ourselves in such a situation again. This is what hybrid warfare is like.”

    It comes as countries including Denmark’s close Sweden pledged assistance in defending from drones.

    The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, who is also holding a press conference at the same time as the Danish one, said: “Knowingly or unknowingly, drone attacks are affecting Denmark’s ability to hold the EU summit on Wednesday.”

    Kristersson also said that alleged hybrid attacks on Poland, Estonia and Denmark could “just as likely have happened in Sweden, and could happen in Sweden.”

    The Swedish foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said the region now faced a “very serious security situation”, meaning it was vital to have “close relations with our neighbours”.

    Sweden has sent anti-drone equipment to Denmark. Swedish and Norwegian police will also work with Danish police during the summit.

    Denmark’s minister of emergency situations, Torsten Schack Pedersen, said that a bill is on its way to the Danish parliament, Folketing, relating to neutralisation of drones.

    Share

    Updated at 15.05 CEST

    Russia exits European anti-torture convention

    Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed a law denouncing the European convention for the prevention of torture, according to a government website.

    Russia’s parliament previously voted to leave the treaty, which Moscow ratified in 1998.

    According to the legislation passed by parliament, Russia’s denunciation was in response to the Council of Europe refusing to seat a Russian representative on a committee that oversees the anti-torture convention

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    Romania recovers new drone fragments near border with Ukraine, minister says

    Romania has found new drone fragments in its eastern county of Tulcea, which neighbours Ukraine, defence minister Ionut Mosteanu said.

    Defence ministry experts have collected the drone parts, Reuters reports, for further investigation.

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