The navigation system of a plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen was disrupted due to suspected Russian interference, the European Commission has said.A spokesperson said the “GPS jamming” happened while the Commission president was about to arrive in southern Bulgaria on Sunday, but she still landed safely.They added: “We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia.”The Financial Times, citing unnamed officials, reported that von der Leyen’s plane had to land at Plovdiv Airport with the pilots using paper maps.The European Commission said “threats and intimidation are a regular component of Russia’s hostile actions” and that the incident would reinforce its commitment to “ramp up our defence capabilities and support for Ukraine”.The EU will deploy additional satellites into low Earth orbit with the aim of bolstering its ability to detect GPS interference, the bloc’s Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said following the incident. The Bulgarian government confirmed that, during the flight, “the satellite signal transmitting information to the plane’s GPS navigation system was neutralised”.The statement continued: “To ensure the flight’s safety, air control services immediately offered an alternative landing method using terrestrial navigation tools.”Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the FT that its information was “incorrect”.The Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority said there had been a “noticeable increase” in GPS incidents, including jamming, since February 2022 – when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Tens of thousands of incidents of jamming have been reported by airlines operating around the Baltic coast in the last few years. The three Baltic nations – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – are bookended by Russian territory.In March 2024, an RAF plane carrying the UK’s then-Defence Secretary Grant Schapps reported a spoofing incident – in which legitimate signals are replaced with fake ones, indicating a false location.The plane, which had been flying near the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which sits be …
