NATO is working to prevent Russian jamming of civil flights, the alliance's Secretary General Mark Rutte said today - two days after a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen lost a satellite signal feeding information to its GPS navigation system in Bulgarian airspace, the Associated Press reported, BTA reports.
The plane nevertheless landed safely on Sunday at Plovdiv airport. Bulgarian authorities said they suspect Russian interference, AP notes. Von der Leyen and Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov visited the "Vazovski Masinostroitelni Zavodi" on Sunday (VMZ) in Sopot.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia was involved in jamming the plane's GPS signal. Yesterday, the British newspaper "Financial Times" wrote that alleged Russian interference had led to disruptions in the plane's GPS navigation during its approach to land at Plovdiv airport. The Council of Ministers confirmed that such an incident had occurred, without indicating who might be responsible.
"We are taking this very seriously," Rutte said today at a press conference in Luxembourg with the Prime Minister of the Duchy, Luc Frieden, and the Minister of Defense, Yuriko Backes. "I can assure you that we are working day and night to counter this, to prevent it and to make sure that they don't do it again," he stressed, without giving further details.
Neither Russia nor Von der Leyen have commented publicly on what happened. The European Union and NATO are separate organizations with different member states, but Europe's security is a vital issue for both, the AP notes.
Rutte said the jamming was part of a complex campaign by Russia of "hybrid threats," such as the cutting of submarine cables in the Baltic Sea, a plot to assassinate a German industrialist and a cyberattack on Britain's National Health Service.
"I've always hated the word 'hybrid' because it sounds so nice, but this jamming of civilian aircraft, with potentially catastrophic consequences, is precisely hybrid," he stressed.
The Associated Press has compiled a map of nearly 80 incidents tracking a campaign of disruption across Europe blamed on Russia, which the head of Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6, Richard Moore, recently described as "shocking." reckless". Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Western officials have repeatedly accused Russia of dozens of attacks and other incidents ranging from vandalism to arson and attempted murder.
Russia's interference includes jamming and spoofing. Jamming means that a strong radio signal disrupts communications, while spoofing tricks the receiver of the signal into thinking that they are in a different place or time than they actually are, the AP notes.
"The threat from the Russians is increasing every day. Let's not be naive: this could also affect Luxembourg, it could also reach the Netherlands," Rutte said. "With the latest Russian missile technology, for example, the difference now between Lithuania on the front line and Luxembourg, The Hague or Madrid is five to 10 minutes. That's how long it takes for this missile to reach these parts of Europe," the NATO Secretary General noted.
The entire continent is under "direct threat from the Russians", Rutte warned. "We are all on the eastern flank now, whether you live in London or Tallinn", he added.
Bulgaria will not investigate the jamming of Von der Leyen's plane because "such things happen every day", Rosen Zhelyazkov told journalists in Burgas earlier today.
Such things happen every day, which is why planes, long before there was a GPS system, also took off and landed. At these times, a protocol has been created, this protocol is in all countries where the European Aviation Safety Agency has observations of the radius of influence, and these protocols very clearly state that when there is interference in the GPS signal, one approaches it with instrumental navigation, the so-called. conventional method, added Rosen Zhelyazkov.
According to him, there is nothing that the Bulgarian Air Traffic Control (ATC) has not implemented according to protocol and there is nothing that is different from everything that is observed as a result of the war in Ukraine, as a way of conducting radio-electronic warfare.
Unfortunately, this is one of the side, but not unimportant consequences of such conflicts, added Prime Minister Zhelyazkov.