Bulgarian authorities have said they suspect Russia of jamming the GPS system of the jet carrying the EU Commission president on Sunday.
If someone deliberately jams your jet’s GPS, it’s fair to assume they are trying to threaten or intimidate you.
The Kremlin hasn’t responded to Sky News but its spokesperson told the Financial Times « your information is incorrect », when asked about the allegations.
However, the timing of the alleged interference is interesting.
It happened as the EU is preparing its 19th sanctions package on Russia, and European leaders are discussing what security guarantees they can offer Ukraine while also trying to persuade the US to get tough.
It also came as EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was on a four-day tour of member states that border or are near to Russia.
She was seeing « first-hand the everyday challenges of threats coming from Russia and its proxies », according to her spokesperson.
These threats are part of the hybrid war that numerous European leaders, generals and the NATO chief have repeatedly warned about since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The hybrid attacks they accuse Moscow of carrying out range from cyber attacks to suspected attempts to spy on NATO bases.
I remember Lieutenant General Andre Bodemann, head of Germany’s homeland defence command, vividly laying out some of the challenges being faced when I interviewed him last year.
« We have a lot of hybrid threats: that’s fake news, disinformation, cyber attacks, espionage and sabotage… We see drones over my operations cell, for example, we even saw explosives in the vicinity of the NATO pipeline, » he said.
These types of alleged attacks have continued and are expected to escalate as the EU puts more pressure on Moscow, according to experts.
Last week, a security source told me that they were aware of several unidentified drones monitoring NATO members’ troop movements as they travelled through eastern Germany and the state of Thuringia to the eastern front to transport ammunition to Ukraine.
Read more from Sky News:
Who is messing with GPS signals – and why?
They suspect this was part of an intelligence gathering exercise by the Russians as the focus was on movements by NATO nations.
It follows similar allegations published by the New York Times that Russian drones were flying over US weapons routes in Germany.
The Kremlin has denied these and all the previous allegations that it’s behind hybrid attacks.
Asked about the New York Times report, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, told journalists the Kremlin had not had time to read the story closely.
« But it’s hard to imagine, because then the Germans would have seen it clearly, and they would hardly have kept quiet. So, of course, all this looks more like another newspaper fake, » he said.
However, the chief of domestic intelligence for the state of Thuringia, Stephan Kramer, told me his team were taking the reports seriously.
So, with these allegations in mind, plus the fact the GPS-jamming happened as the EU is trying to put extra pressure on the Kremlin, many will understand why Bulgaria has said it suspects Russia of being involved.
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