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Ursula von der Leyen’s plane hit by suspected Russian GPS interference

www.ft.com

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http://archive.today/2025.09.01-181721/https://www.ft.com/content/3c330f87-71c4-4db9-8259-f5c132c1f0d3

A suspected Russian interference attack targeting Ursula von der Leyen disabled GPS navigation services at a Bulgarian airport and forced the European Commission president’s plane to land using paper maps.

A jet carrying von der Leyen to Plovdiv on Sunday afternoon was deprived of electronic navigational aids while on approach to the city’s airport, in what three officials briefed on the incident said was being treated as a Russian interference operation.

“The whole airport area GPS went dark,” said one of the officials. After circling the airport for an hour, the plane’s pilot took the decision to land the plane manually using analogue maps, they added. “It was undeniable interference.”

The Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority confirmed the incident in a statement to the Financial Times.

The European Commission later confirmed the incident. “There was GPS jamming but the plane landed safely in Bulgaria,” a spokesperson said.

“We have received info from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia.

“We are of course aware and used to the threats and intimidation that are a regular component of Russia’s hostile behaviour,” the spokesperson added.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the FT that “your information is incorrect”.

Other aircraft in the area appear to have been able to ascertain and report their positions without issue, according to online flight trackers, giving weight to the suspicion that the jamming of von der Leyen’s aircraft was a narrowly focused effort.

The head of the German armed forces, Carsten Breuer, said on Monday he had also experienced two similar cases of GPS interference — once when flying in military aircraft over the Baltic Sea and on another occasion while observing an exercise in Lithuania.

Breuer said Russia was using such tactics to “test” Nato member states and their reactions.

Von der Leyen was flying from Warsaw to the central Bulgarian city of Plovdiv to meet the country’s prime minister, Rosen Zhelyazkov, and tour an ammunition factory when the incident took place.