EU member states debate how to make leaders’ flights more secure as Russia blamed for GPS loss
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Italy is considering keeping state flights secret after the satellite signal of the aircraft carrying the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, was allegedly jammed by Russia, Italian defence ministry sources said.
Von der Leyen, a fierce critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Moscow’s war in Ukraine, was flying to Bulgaria on Sunday when her charter plane lost satellite navigation aids, delaying its arrival in Plovdiv, and reportedly forcing it to circle an airport for an hour.
Following the incident, EU member states are debating how to make leaders’ flights more secure, as GPS jamming and “spoofing”, an electronic warfare tactic that causes incorrect navigation information to be displayed, have increased since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and escalated even more sharply in the past year.
