The rumor about the landing of the plane of the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen using paper maps due to an alleged hybrid attack by the Kremlin “smells of desperation“. This was stated by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova at a briefing on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum, which is taking place in Vladivostok.
“These latest rumors about Ursula von der Leyen and the landing of her plane /b.r. in the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv/ with the help of paper maps smell of despair“, the diplomat said.
The false information was thrown out only to distract attention from the successful SCO summit, Zakharova said.
“What we saw in the Western press, what we heard from Ursula von der Leyen's representatives - this is not just a lie, as sometimes happens with them, with a certain amount of truth or a mixture of half-truths and untruths. This is a 100% fabricated fake... It can hardly be considered a coincidence that this clumsy, primitive thrown-in statement was made against the backdrop of a successful meeting of the heads of state of the SCO member states, the impressive successes of an organization that represents more than half of the world's population. "I am sure that all this was necessary to divert attention and distract from the real events," Zakharova said.
Zakharova joked that perhaps something broke not on von der Leyen's plane, but on her.
EC representative Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said at a briefing on Monday that the plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv suffered a failure in its electronic navigation system while approaching the airport. According to Itkonen, the EC has received information from Bulgarian authorities that the damage was caused by “Russian interference“.
The press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov called the claim about the alleged involvement of Russia in the incident false.
The Flightradar24 service stated that despite the statements of the European Commission about damage to the plane carrying the head of the EC, the aircraft's systems registered a good GPS signal throughout the flight, and the flight lasted only nine minutes longer than planned.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov stated that the country's authorities would not conduct an investigation into this incident.