A plane carrying European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was hit by GPS jamming as it prepared to land in Bulgaria, with officials pointing the finger of blame at Russia.
Commission spokesperson Arianna Podesta said the GPS satellite signal transmitting information to von der Leyen’s chartered jet was jammed as it approached Plovdiv International Airport in southern Bulgaria on Sunday.
“We can indeed confirm that there was GPS jamming, but the plane landed safely in Bulgaria. We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia,” Podesta said on Monday.
Bulgaria issued a statement saying that the country’s Civil Aviation Authority instructed the pilots to resort to “terrestrial navigation tools” as an alternative method of landing safely.
The Financial Times newspaper, which first reported the incident, said the plane was forced to land using “paper maps”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the accusations against Russia in comments to the Financial Times, saying “your information is incorrect”.
Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents – including jamming, which involves emitting a strong radio signal that overwhelms communications.
In April last year, a Finnish airline was forced to temporarily suspend flights to the Estonian city of Tartu following jamming. The month before, a plane carrying the British defence secretary had its satellite signal jammed as it flew near Russian territory.
Von der Leyen was visiting Bulgaria as part of a four-day tour of “front line” European Union states on the bloc’s eastern flank – namely, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria – that are considered to be more exposed to threats from Russia.
Podesta said the incident would reinforce the bloc’s “unshakable commitment to ramp up defence capabilities and support for Ukraine”, underlining the “urgency” of the commission president’s mission in the region.
The incident came as Western powers discuss how to guarantee Ukraine’s security in case of a truce deal in the three-and-a-half-year Russia-Ukraine war.
US President Donald Trump moved to restore dialogue with Russia at the start of his second presidency, but diplomatic efforts to end the war have lost momentum.
Moscow continues to stall on a potential meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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