{"id":389806,"date":"2025-09-01T17:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T17:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/389806\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T17:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T17:50:11","slug":"russia-suspected-of-jamming-navigation-on-eu-leaders-plane-above-bulgaria-russia-ukraine-war-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/389806\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia suspected of jamming navigation on EU leader\u2019s plane above Bulgaria | Russia-Ukraine war News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen on four-day tour of \u2018front line\u2019 states on EU\u2019s eastern flank landed with \u2018paper maps\u2019.<\/p>\n

Published On 1 Sep 20251 Sep 2025<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Commission spokesperson Arianna Podesta said the GPS satellite signal transmitting information to von der Leyen\u2019s chartered jet was jammed as it approached Plovdiv International Airport in southern Bulgaria on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can indeed confirm that there was\u00a0GPS\u00a0jamming, 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<\/a>,\u201d Podesta said on Monday.<\/p>\n

Bulgaria issued a statement saying that the country\u2019s Civil Aviation Authority instructed the pilots to resort to \u201cterrestrial navigation tools\u201d as an alternative method of landing safely.<\/p>\n

The Financial Times newspaper, which first reported the incident, said the plane was forced to land using \u201cpaper maps\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the accusations against Russia in comments to the Financial Times, saying \u201cyour information is incorrect\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine<\/a> in 2022, Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging\u00a0dozens of attacks and other incidents \u2013 including jamming, which involves emitting a strong radio signal that overwhelms communications.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Von der Leyen was visiting Bulgaria as part of a four-day tour of \u201cfront line\u201d European Union states on the bloc\u2019s eastern flank \u2013 namely, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria \u2013 that are considered to be more exposed to threats from Russia.<\/p>\n

Podesta said the incident would reinforce the bloc\u2019s \u201cunshakable commitment to ramp up defence capabilities and support for Ukraine\u201d, underlining the \u201curgency\u201d of the commission president\u2019s mission in the region.<\/p>\n

The incident came as Western powers discuss how to guarantee Ukraine\u2019s security in case of a truce deal in the three-and-a-half-year Russia-Ukraine war.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Moscow continues to stall on a potential meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a> and Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen on four-day tour of \u2018front line\u2019 states on EU\u2019s eastern flank landed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[1306,13489,6178,2000,299,5187,1699,12,285,332,7661],"class_list":{"0":"post-389806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-aviation","9":"tag-bulgaria","10":"tag-conflict","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-russia-ukraine-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115130310815757341","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}