NATO takes aim at Russia’s GPS hacking after EU leader’s plane jammed

NATO is working to thwart Russian jamming of civilian flights, said the alliance’s chief on Tuesday, two days after a jet carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen lost its ability to use GPS navigation midair in Bulgarian airspace.

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

“It is taken very seriously,” said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte during a news conference in Luxembourg with the duchy’s prime minister and defense minister. “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.” He did not elaborate.

Neither Russia nor von der Leyen has commented publicly on the incident. The EU and NATO are separate entities with different sets of member countries, but Europe’s security is a vital issue for both.

Rutte said the jamming was part of a complex campaign by Russia of “hybrid threats” like cutting of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea , a plot to assassinate a German industrialist , and a cyberattack on the National Heath Service in the United Kingdom.

“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,” he said.

The Associated Press has plotted almost 80 incidents on a map tracking 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 attacks and other incidents , ranging from vandalism to arson and attempted assassination.

The interference from Russia includes jamming and spoofing. Jamming means a strong radio signal overwhelms communications, whereas spoofing misleads a receiver into thinking it is in a different location or in a past or future time period.

“The threat from the Russians is increasing every day. Let’s not be naive 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.”

The whole continent was under “direct threat from the Russians,” he warned. “We are all on the eastern flank now, whether you live in London or Tallinn.”

Bulgaria will not investigate the jamming of von der Leyen’s plane because “such things happen every day,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said Tuesday.

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

Associated Press writer Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria contributed to this report.

北约秘书长周二表示，北约正在努力阻止俄罗斯干扰民用航班。两天前，载有欧盟委员会主席乌尔苏拉·冯德莱恩的喷气式飞机在保加利亚领空飞行时失去了使用 GPS 导航的能力。

飞机于周日安全着陆，但保加利亚当局表示，他们怀疑俄罗斯是此次干预的幕后黑手。

北约秘书长马克·吕特在卢森堡与卢森堡首相兼国防大臣共同举行的新闻发布会上表示：“我们对此事高度重视。我可以向你们保证，我们正在日夜兼程地应对、阻止此类事件再次发生，并确保他们不会再次作案。” 他没有详细说明。

俄罗斯和冯德莱恩均未就此事发表公开评论。欧盟和北约是成员国不同的独立实体，但欧洲安全对两者都至关重要。

吕特表示，此次干扰是俄罗斯发起的“混合威胁”复杂行动的一部分，该行动还包括切断波罗的海海底电缆、密谋暗杀一名德国实业家以及对英国国家卫生服务机构进行网络攻击。

“我一直很讨厌‘混合动力’这个词，因为它听起来很可爱，但混合动力恰恰就是对商用飞机的干扰，可能会造成灾难性的后果，”他说。

美联社在一张地图上标出了近80起事件，追踪了一场席卷欧洲的破坏活动，这场活动被归咎于俄罗斯。英国对外情报局局长称其“极其鲁莽”。自2022年莫斯科全面入侵乌克兰以来，西方官员指责俄罗斯及其代理人策划了数十起袭击和其他事件，包括破坏、纵火和暗杀未遂。

来自俄罗斯的干扰手段包括干扰和欺骗。干扰是指用强烈的无线电信号压制通信，而欺骗则是误导接收器，使其认为自己身处不同的地点，或处于过去或未来的时间段。

“来自俄罗斯的威胁与日俱增。我们不要天真地以为，这有一天可能会波及卢森堡，甚至荷兰，”吕特说。“例如，以俄罗斯最新的导弹技术来看，立陶宛与卢森堡、海牙或马德里之间的差距只有五到十分钟。这就是导弹抵达欧洲这些地区所需的时间。”

他警告说，整个欧洲大陆都处于“俄罗斯人的直接威胁”之下。“无论你住在伦敦还是塔林，我们现在都处于东翼。”

保加利亚总理罗森·热利亚兹科夫周二表示，保加利亚不会调查冯德莱恩的飞机遭到干扰一事，因为“这种事情每天都在发生”。

他说这是俄罗斯入侵乌克兰战争的副作用之一，这种情况在欧洲各地都有发生。

美联社驻保加利亚索非亚记者韦塞林·托什科夫对本报道亦有贡献。