French President Emmanuel Macron moved on Thursday to publicly reject reports that the CIA had alerted Paris to a potential Russian drone attack targeting southern Europe, even as he offered a striking admission: that such an attack against France remains entirely within the realm of possibility.
The denial came in response to a report published Wednesday by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which claimed that US intelligence had informed the governments of Spain, France and Italy that Russia might be preparing to launch small explosive drones — reportedly of the “Gerbera” variety — from merchant vessels disguised as commercial shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. According to the report, the warning had been passed to European foreign ministries shortly after a visit to Moscow by CIA Director John Ratcliffe in late August.
Speaking in a joint interview broadcast on French networks TF1 and France 2, Macron was unequivocal in his rejection of the specific claim. “We can deny this piece of information, the CIA did not inform France of this information,” he said, adding that Italy’s defence minister had issued an identical denial.
Italy Also Pushes Back on the Report
Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto moved swiftly to dismiss the El Mundo report earlier the same day, writing on social media platform X that the alarm raised by the Spanish newspaper lacked supporting evidence. Spain, the third government named in the original report, had not issued a public statement on the matter by Thursday evening, leaving its position notably unclear compared to the firm denials from Paris and Rome.
Despite the pushback from two of the three governments named, the underlying warning has not been entirely dismissed. Some analysts have noted that a government denying it received a specific intelligence briefing is a different claim altogether from denying that the threat itself is credible — and Macron’s own remarks suggested he was drawing exactly that distinction.
Macron Acknowledges a ‘Plausible’ Threat
Even as he rejected the specifics of the CIA warning, Macron used the interview to deliver a broader and more unsettling message about the state of European security. He pointed directly to the drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany on the night of 4-5 August, an incident that German authorities have formally attributed to Russia, as evidence that Moscow’s campaign of disruption against European infrastructure is already underway.
France has not yet experienced a comparable attack, Macron said, but he was careful not to rule one out. “When you ask me, ‘Could this happen?’ my answer is yes,” he told viewers, describing the possibility of a Russian strike on French soil as “plausible.” He argued that recent months have produced “several signs indicating that Russia is preparing to do this,” framing the drone speculation as part of a wider pattern of Russian hybrid aggression against NATO and EU member states rather than an isolated rumour.
Macron went further, stating that Russia views “Europe to be the strategic heart of Ukraine” — a formulation suggesting that Moscow’s hybrid campaign against European infrastructure, from suspected sabotage to drone incursions, should be understood as an extension of its war effort in Ukraine rather than a separate front.
A Familiar Pattern Across Europe
The Mediterranean drone report follows a similar method to an earlier suspected Russian drone launch off the coast of Sweden in February, according to reporting on the incident, reinforcing concerns among European security officials that shipping-container-launched drones represent an emerging and difficult-to-detect threat vector along the continent’s coastlines.
Whether or not the specific CIA warning described by El Mundo proves accurate, the episode has added to a mounting sense of unease across southern Europe, where governments are increasingly forced to respond publicly to reports of Russian threats — whether confirmed or not — as part of managing public anxiety around the war’s spillover effects.
For Macron, the balancing act on display Thursday was unmistakable: reassure the French public that no specific, credible warning has been ignored, while simultaneously preparing the country for the possibility that an attack, in some form, may still come. France has already announced preparatory measures aimed at strengthening the protection of critical national infrastructure in response to the broader pattern of hybrid threats now facing Europe.
