French President Emmanuel Macron suggested the possibility of destroying unmanned vehicles that violate the airspace of EU and NATO countries, and called for even greater strategic uncertainty regarding the European response to such incidents.
As reported by TASS, he made this statement at the opening of the European Political Community summit in Copenhagen.
“I believe that the main response should be even more unpredictability and strategic uncertainty,” Macron said. “And I believe it is very important to send a clear signal: drone violations of our space carry a great risk. They can be destroyed, period. And we are not going to warn about this in advance.”
He clarified that for aircraft, there is a separate procedure carried out in coordination with NATO.
Macron also proposed detaining tankers of the so-called shadow fleet at sea “for weeks” to disrupt Russian oil supplies.
“It is very important that in this way you destroy the business model by detaining these vessels even for a few days or weeks and forcing them to organize supplies differently, which reduces the efficiency of the business model. Because this model was organized even before 2022, but now it is fully industrialized. And I propose, within the framework of a ‘coalition of the willing’, in close cooperation with NATO, to work on how to optimize these joint actions,” Macron said.
He cited the example of France detaining a tanker off its coast that was heading from a Russian port to India. According to him, such measures allow verification of the presence of “shadow fleet” vessels near a country’s shores, as well as “ensuring that these vessels comply with international rules”.
The head of state also claimed that the vessel detained by France was sailing “under a false flag” and stated that by stopping this tanker “for one or two weeks”, France undermined the efficiency of oil supplies from Russia.
“Thus, the ‘shadow fleet’ is a very good target if we want to increase our effectiveness in reducing these capacities. And I think this is a very important step forward in increasing our pressure on Russia,” he concluded.
