In an incident near the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, currently docked in Malmö, the Swedish army confirmed on Friday, February 27th that the drone neutralized by the Swedish military was of Russian origin.
The Russian intelligence ship Zhigulevsk was located in Swedish territorial waters at the time, as reported by the army.
The Swedish ship HMS Rapp was monitoring the Russian vessel to supervise its transit through the Øresund strait while protecting the French naval group. The Swedish ship’s onboard systems detected drone activity nearby and activated countermeasures to disrupt the drone.
The drone was intercepted on Wednesday by a Swedish naval patrol boat approximately 13 kilometers from the Charles de Gaulle in the Øresund strait, near Malmö where the French flagship was on a stopover before participating in NATO exercises.
Jean-Noël Barrot expressed skepticism regarding the incident, stating that if it had a Russian origin, it was a ridiculous provocation.
French Foreign Minister assured that the drone posed no real threat to the vessel and its group.
The Kremlin dismissed claims that the intercepted and disrupted drone was Russian, calling the allegations absurd.
Dmitri Peskov, the Russian presidential spokesperson, criticized the notion that the drone was Russian simply due to the presence of a Russian ship nearby, labeling it as absurd.
