French forces board Russian tanker suspected of drone launches – as it happened

Since we’re on Macron and France …

French military personnel were reportedly on the deck of the suspected “shadow fleet” tanker we reported on a bit earlier (17:17), which is stationed off France and suspected of involvement in drone flights over Denmark last month, AFP reported.

A source within the executive branch, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP earlier that the French navy had boarded the Boracay, a Benin-flagged vessel blacklisted by the European Union for being part of Russia’s sanction-busting “shadow fleet” of ageing oil tankers.

That’s it – the leaders are now leaving the Christiansborg Palace, so we will take that a confirmation that no press conference will take place until after the dinner with the Royals.

Leaving the venue, Finland’s PM Petteri Orpo told journalists that the talks were “good,” but he “would have hoped for more concreteness,” via Reuters.

Erm.

Germany arrested three men suspected of being members of Hamas and planning a terrorist attack on Jewish and Israeli site in Germany, the country’s federal prosecutor said in a statement.

The men – two German nationals and the third one described only as born in Lebanon – were allegedly involved “in procuring firearms and ammunition” to conduct “attacks on Israeli and Jewish institutions in Germany.” An AK-47 assault rifle and several firearms were found with them, the prosecutor said.

Defence and security editor

French authorities are investigating an oil tanker that is subject to sanctions and suspected of being part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which may have been a launchpad for mystery drone flights that forced the closure of airports in Denmark last week.

The tanker, known as the Boracay, has used numerous identities and was one of four Russia-linked vessels in the seas near Denmark at the time of the drone sightings on 22 and 24 September, which so far have not been fully explained.

It was sailing from the Russian oil terminal in Primorsk near St Petersburg, carrying 750,000 barrels of crude oil, to Vadinar in India, but was intercepted by a French naval vessel on Sunday and diverted towards Saint-Nazaire in western France while inquiries continue.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said it “was a good thing” that the oil tanker was under investigation by the public prosecutor – while the Kremlin said it had no information about the tanker or the incident when asked.

Stephane Kellenberger, the public prosector in Brest, in western France said an investigation was taking place after the crew’s “failure to justify the nationality of the vessel” and “refusal to cooperate”.

Boracay, a Benin-flagged tanker, had just changed its name from Pushpa. Under that name, it was monitored sailing west around Denmark last week, and was cited by naval experts as one of a handful of Russia-linked vessels that may have been involved in the drone incidents.

Copenhagen airport was closed for four hours in the evening of 22 September and Aalborg airport two days later, after drones were sighted in Danish airspace. None, however, were shot down.

The summit in Copenhagen continues behind the closed doors.

We should hear from the leaders in just over an hour – 5.30pm local time, 4.30pm BST – when they take part in the closing press conference.

Munich mayor Dieter Reiter has just confirmed on social media that Oktoberfest will reopen at 5.30pm local time (4.30pm BST) after the earlier bomb scare, as police searches of the site didn’t find anything of concern (14:18, 15:23).

The search of the Oktoberfest site continues (14:18), and the final decision will be made later today with no immediate threats identified so far, a police spokeperson told reporters in the latest update, according to Bild and SZ.

Arriving at the Copenhagen summit, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said that Budapest remained opposed to the idea of accepting Ukraine as a member of the European Union.

“The Hungarians would not like to belong to the same integration format, even a military one like Nato, [or] a political economic one like European Union, with the Ukrainians. So my proposal, the Hungarian proposal is to have [a] strategic agreement [with Ukraine], not [a] membership,” he said.

“Ukraine is a heroic country. We have to support them. No question of that. The question is the form how we do that. Membership is too much,” he said.

Orbán stressed that it wasn’t his view, but “a decision of the Hungarian people.”

Repeatedly asked about his opposition, he insisted his view was there should be “no membership at all.”

“Nobody knows what will happen in 100 years … but today is obviously no, no membership, … [it] would mean, first, that war would come into the European Union; second, the money from European Union would go to Ukraine. Both [would be] bad,” he said.

He also dismissed suggestions that the bloc could change its rules on opening negotiations with new member states to circumvent the Hungarian veto.

“There is a legal, strictly settled procedure how to do it. We have to stick to that. It means unanimous decision,” he stressed.

Orbán also defended his earlier comments, in which he argued that Ukraine is no longer a sovereign country.

He said:

“They don’t have money to maintain themselves. We pay the army, we pay the public bureaucracy, we pay the pension, we pay everything. If you are paid [for] by somebody else, you’re not a sovereign country. It’s not a moral statement, it’s just a financial fact.”

The Hungarian PM also offered a bit of advice to Denmark over recent drone incursions, saying his advice would be to “shoot them down.”

A decision on whether the Oktoberfest in Munich can safely reopen today is expected to be taken in the next hour, with local authorities set to hold a press conference at 3pm, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

After this morning’s explosions and fire at a residential address (11:21), a badly injured person believed to be the main suspect was found nearby and had since died, AFP reported.

Two other people were also injured, and one person is missing, SZ said.

But the investigators have found a letter setting out a further bomb threat against the Oktoberfest, prompting the authorities to delay the opening of the site today.

“Security sweeps are currently underway in the restricted access areas around the festival grounds,” the police said, adding that all staff there were requested to leave the festival grounds.

Elsewhere in Europe… thousands of workers in Greece have marched to parliament in Athens during a one-day general strike against a government plan to allow employers to extend working hours.

Trains, ferries and taxis came to a halt while teachers and seafarers joined those protesting a bill which – according to Greece’s largest trade unions – would allow employers to seek up to 13 hours of work a day from their staff compared with the current eight.

“We are here to say no to a monstrous bill,” Dimitra, a 24-year-old sales assistant who joined the demonstrations in capital Athens told Reuters. “Stop it! We are not machines.”

The draft law, which also gives employers more flexibility on short-term hirings and amends rules on annual leave in the private sector, is expected to be submitted to parliament for approval this month.

The government says the planned reform is not obligatory and will apply only for up to 37 days a year. It says that it offers workers the chance to get 40% overtime payments and that it comes following employers and workers’ demands for a more flexible labour market.

But unions say it will increase pressure on workers in Greece. Public sector workers say the government should increase wages instead.

The Russian-installed operator of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has claimed the situation at the occupied facility was “under control”.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned the nuclear plant had been off grid for seven straight days, warning of the potential threat of a “critical” situation.

It is the longest outage at Zaporizhzhia since Russia invaded and seized the nuclear plant, which is Europe’s largest.

Zelenskyy said Russian shelling was preventing restoration of a power line needed to cool the reactors and prevent a meltdown.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, said it was working with both sides to restore the external power line. Rafael Grossi said there was no immediate danger as long as diesel generators remained in operation, providing emergency power for the facility.

“The situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is under control,” the operator said on social media, adding that it had enough fuel to keep backup electricity generators running.

French president Emmanuel Macron said it “was a good thing” that France was investigating a suspected infraction by the oil tanker Boracay for what he called “serious offences”. He stopped short of confirming a claimed link between the tanker and drone sightings over Denmark.

The vessel is suspected of belonging to the so-called “shadow fleet” involved in the Russian oil trade. Macron said the assessment is that between 600 to 1,000 vessels form part of that fleet.

Macron also addressed the idea to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, highlighting the importance of respecting international law. He said he was aligned with Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever, who has been critical about the EU Commission initiative.

“When assets are frozen, one has to respect international law. This is what the Belgian Prime Minister also recalled,” Macron told reporters.

The French president was speaking as he arrived at the informal meeting between EU heads of state in Copenhagen.

Europe will not allow Russia to “sow division and anxiety”, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said before the talks in Denmark and highlighted a “pattern” of behaviour after a spate of drone sightings across particularly Denmark.

“It’s a pattern, and this pattern is coming from Russia,” von der Leyen told reporters as the defence talks kicked off in Copenhagen. “Russia tries to test us, but Russia also tries to sow division and anxiety in our societies. We will not let this happen”.

The EU is working as fast as possible to reach an agreement on using Russian assets to finance a reparation loan for Ukraine, said the bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas, even though not all member states are supporting the plan

Kallas insisted on the need to use the seized Russian assets to finance the war reparations to be paid ultimately to Ukraine rather than use taxpayer funds. “If we don’t take these [Russian] assets into account then it is on our taxpayers, that’s for sure,” she told reporters in Copenhagen.

Finland supports the proposed use of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, the county’s prime minister Petteri Orpo said.

“We need a strong and sustainable, long-term package for Ukraine and [achieving that] via frozen Russian assets is a very good idea and I think that we have to go forward with that,” Orpo told reporters at the EU summit.

in Brussels

Ahead of the European summit, several EU leaders have been meeting business leaders in Copenhagen.

The main message was to speed up efforts to cut red tape, but each intervention had a particular national flavour.

In remarks that ranged widely over the economic agenda, French president Emmanuel Macron highlighted France’s longstanding goal of prioritising European companies.

“European preference… was still recently an awful word, totally impossible to be pronounced in a business meeting. But this is a necessity because we are the unique crazy place where we don’t protect our domestic players. In the US, you have a US agenda. In China, it’s no more Chinese preference, it is a Chinese exclusivity sometimes.”

He said Europe was “the only place where you put regulations on your players, but at the same time you negotiate the lifting of barriers with non-European players with a double standard”. This is almost certainly a reference to the EU trade deal with Mercosur, which France argues disadvantages European farmers.

Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk, who has argued for a review of some Green Deal regulations, said the EU should be easing demands on companies to allow them to compete with more lightly regulated competitors elsewhere in the world.

He recounted his “blunt” exchanges with Polish steel companies, who he said wanted deregulation, rather than simply state aid, i.e. subsidies or tax breaks.

“This is why we have to think about our real acceleration when it comes to the deregulation process. Our ambitions cannot mean that we continue to impose new burdens on companies, it cannot mean that because of Europe, companies lose competitiveness vis-à-vis the world.

Look at the world around us: we Europe are responsible for only 6% of the world’s emissions, we cannot constantly be the ones who reduce emissions at the pace that no company can bear. We cannot constantly increase our ambition when others do not.”

While the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted that she had made six proposals to cut red tape in different areas, the so-called omnibuses, which she claimed added up to an €8bn reduction in bureaucracy for business.

She highlighted that none had been agreed by the EU’s co-legislators, i.e. the Council of Ministers and European parliament. And in a not-so-subtle dig at where she saw the blockage, she said she wished MEPs had been at the business summit in Copenhagen.

“I would like to see the European parliament here too because we need them also to move the whole ship forward.”

But not everyone seems to be on the same page when it comes to the use of frozen Russian assets.

Luxembourg’s prime minister Luc Frieden tells reporters that the commissions’s proposal raises many legal questions, as “you can’t just take over assets that belong to another state so easily,”

“All proposals are welcome, but we must first ensure that they work in practice and that we know who will ultimately bear responsibility for them,” he said.

Latvian prime minister Evika Siliņa tells reporters that the meeting needs to help the EU “coordinate even more what we do in Nato, and what we can do at the European Union level.”

She says it’s a “timely meeting” as “the Russians are not stopping those drones … flying over our borders and our cities,” naming Poland, Latvia and Denmark as some of the countries affected.

She says the Baltics are a bit ahead with previous experience of drone incursions, having spent some money on “sensors” and following up on lessons learned by Ukraine on how to detect drones and protect civilian airports.

She also welcomes the proposal to use Russian immobilised assets for Ukraine, saying “we really need to see what’s in the details.” “We have been asking for quite a long time to use those immobilised assets for Ukraine,” she adds.

Frederiksen also says that Europe is “in the most difficult and dangerous situation since the second world war,” saying it’s worse than during the cold war.

“I think it is serious. I think the war in Ukraine is very serious. When I look at Europe today, I think we are in the most difficult and dangerous situation since the end of the second world war – not the cold war.”

Asked about drone incursions, she says that she is generally in favour of shooting them down, but caveats it that “it has to be done in the right way.”

And that ends her briefing.

The Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen is now speaking to reporters on arrival to the main summit venue in Copenhagen.

She says the main job for the leaders is to “discuss security and defence deterrence, including drones and help to Ukraine,” with a side conversation on migration.

She also backs the European Commission’s proposal for a reparation loan for Ukraine, secured on frozen Russian assets.

In a very stark message to other leaders, he says:

“Let me be very clear: there has to be a common European goal on this, otherwise we will be divided, and that is not the right way forward for Europe.

I think we have to leave our national perspective talking about security in Europe, and look at the pattern. With the hybrid war going on, and look at the war in Ukraine, not as a war in a European country Ukraine, but as a Russian attempt to threaten all of us. …

I hope that everybody recognises now that there is a hybrid war, and one day it’s Poland, the other day, it’s Denmark, and next week it will probably somewhere else that we see sabotage, or we see drones flying …

So I see this from a European perspective. There is only one country that are willing to threat us, and it is Russia and therefore, we need a very strong answer back.”

But she warns:

“I want us to rearm. I want us to buy more capabilities. I want us to innovate more, for example, on drones.

But at the same time, we have to be very, very transparent and frank. In a hybrid war, you cannot defend yourself against all different kinds of activities. That’s the whole idea of a hybrid war to do many different things at the same time.

So yes, we have to do more, but we will. I don’t think we will ever reach a conclusion where no drones are flying into Europe or no sabotage will be seen. So, yes, we have to do more, but we also have to be frank, that this is hybrid war is about, you know, threatening us all.”

Separately, I am also keeping an eye on the events in Munich, after police said they discovered explosives in a residential building in the north of the city that caught fire and sparked explosions, leaving one person dead, Reuters reported.

Police said the residential building had been deliberately set on fire in a family dispute and one person who was found there had died and another was missing, but not believed to be in danger, Reuters added.

Special forces had to be brought in to defuse booby traps found in the building, according to police, the agency said.

Following the incident, the Oktoberfest said it would remain shut on Wednesday until 5 pm in connection with the explosion.

Munich-published Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted the city’s mayor Dieter Reiter as saying there was a credible threat against the Oktoberfest, which required further investigation.

In other news, Poland says it will extend controls on borders with Germany and Lithuania until 4 April 2026, the Interior Ministry told Reuters.

Poland introduced temporary controls along borders with Germany and Lithuania in July, echoing several other European Union countries in reimposing frontier checks to stem illegal migration.

The Danish media are reporting that the security operation in Copenhagen is the largest seen in the capital since the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, with a large exclusion zone around Christiansborg Palace where the leaders meet.

A number of drones are also reportedly up in the air, but don’t worry: these are controlled by the police to spot any potential issues.

in Palermo

A flotilla seeking to break Israel’s aid blockade of Gaza said on Wednesday that several of its boats had been approached by patrol vessels and a submarine, as crews braced for an Israeli raid.

The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), carrying around 500 pro-Palestinian activists – among them the climate campaigner Greta Thunberg – says its mission is to establish a humanitarian corridor into Gaza.

The convoy, which also includes humanitarian supplies, is currently being shadowed by a Spanish naval ship providing cover in case of drone attacks.

Until Tuesday, the flotilla was also escorted by an Italian warship that, according to organisers, offered participants the chance to abandon their vessels before entering what has been described as a “critical zone”. The activists rejected the offer, denouncing it as an attempt to sabotage the mission. Italy has since withdrawn its frigate.

In recent weeks, the Italian government and the president of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, had repeatedly urged the flotilla to avoid confrontation with Israel and to deliver aid instead via Israeli or Cypriot ports.

Activists, however, insist their operation is not about the aid – which they describe as largely symbolic – but about breaking Israel’s “illegal siege” of the territory.

“Our mission stays true to its original goal of breaking Israel’s illegal blockade and delivering humanitarian aid to the besieged population of Gaza,” said four Italian opposition MPs on board the vessels in a joint statement.

The flotilla was attacked last week by drones that dropped stun grenades and itching powder, causing minor damage but no injuries.

Israel’s navy has said it is preparing to seize control of the more than 50 vessels now within its interception range. The elite Shayetet 13 naval commando unit is reportedly on standby for the operation, which could involve towing ships to the port of Ashdod or sinking some at sea, according to Israel’s public broadcaster Kan.

In a post on X, Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said the flotilla’s rejection of the Italian proposal to unload aid in Cyprus proved that “their real purpose is provocation and serving Hamas”.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has also called on the flotilla to halt its mission, warning that any attempt to break the blockade could jeopardise a recent US-brokered peace initiative between Israel and Hamas.

The Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen warned that the recent drone sightings in Danish airspace warning are “only the beginning; it will get worse and it will get more serious.”

In two major interviews, with the Danish newspaper Berlingske (£) and with the Financial Times (£), Frederiksen urged Europe to discuss “more deeply” what the new security situation means for the continent and how it should respond to counter the threat.

In a stark remark, she said that the situation in Europe reminded her of that in the interwar period in the 20th century, as the continent faces the threats arising from the “real war” in Ukraine, and the new, broader hybrid war waged against it.

“The idea of a hybrid war is to threaten us, to divide us, to destabilise us. To use drones one day, cyber attacks the next day, sabotage on the third day. So this will not end only by [boosting] capabilities,” she told FT.

Her comments come as EU leaders meet in Copenhagen for an informal meeting of the European Council, which will be largely focused on security and Ukraine, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy joining via a video link. It will be followed by a larger meeting of the European Political Community tomorrow.

But the build up to these events was overshadowed by the recent drone sightings and major disruption they brought on Denmark and the Nordics more broadly, bringing home the seriousness of the situation. A number of countries – including France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, the UK, Ukraine, and the US – have offered their support to ensure the events can take place without problems.

I will follow the events unfolding in Copenhagen today and bring you all the key news lines coming from the leaders’ meeting, starting from their doorstep late morning to the press conference in late afternoon.

It’s Wednesday, 1 October 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

Good morning.