NATO to strike back against Russian jamming after von der Leyen's plane loses GPS in Bulgaria

NATO is working to counter Russia's jamming of civilian flights, the alliance's chief said on Tuesday, two days after a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen lost its ability to use GPS navigation mid-air in Bulgarian airspace.

The plane landed safely on Sunday, but Bulgarian authorities said they suspected Russia was behind the interference.

The whole continent was under "direct threat from the Russians," Secretary General Mark Rutte said during a news conference in Luxembourg with the duchy's prime minister and defence minister.

"We are all on the eastern flank now, whether you live in London or Tallinn."

"It is taken very seriously," Rutte added, "I can assure you that we are working day and night to counter this, to prevent it, and to make sure that they will not do it again."

Rutte said the jamming was part of a complex campaign by Russia of hybrid threats like cutting undersea power and communications cables in the Baltic Sea and a cyberattack on the UK's health service.

"I have always hated the words hybrid because it sounds so cuddly, but hybrid is exactly this jamming of commercial airplanes, with potentially disastrous effects," Rutte said.

Tracking alleged Russian attacks

The GPS jamming attack on von der Leyen is the latest in a campaign of disruption across Europe blamed on Russia, which the head of Britain's foreign intelligence service has described as "staggeringly reckless".

Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of hybrid warfare attacks, ranging from vandalism to arson and attempted assassination.

The radio interference from Russia includes jamming — when a strong radio signal overwhelms communications — and spoofing, or misleading a receiver into thinking it is in a different location or time.

"The threat from the Russians is increasing every day. Let's not be naïve about it: this might also involve one day Luxembourg, it might come to the Netherlands," Rutte said.

"With the latest Russian missile technology for example, the difference now between Lithuania on the front line and Luxembourg, The Hague or Madrid is five to 10 minutes. That's the time it takes this missile to reach these parts of Europe."

Bulgaria will not investigate the jamming of von der Leyen's plane because "such things happen every day," Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said on Tuesday.

He said it was one of the side effects of Russia's war in Ukraine and had occurred across Europe.

Neither the Kremlin nor von der Leyen have commented publicly on the incident.