Report says Russian GPS jamming disrupted 123,000 flights over Baltic airspace

BRUSSELS

Nearly 123,000 flights over Baltic airspace were affected by Russian jamming of navigation signals in the first four months of 2025, according to a report by the region’s governments to the International Civil Aviation Organization.

The disruptions, revealed by Swedish broadcaster SVT, show a surge in incidents endangering commercial aviation at a time of rising confrontation between the EU and Moscow.

In April alone, an average of 27.4% of flights in the region experienced interference, Swedish authorities said. Investigators traced the source of the jamming to Russia.

“We consider the situation serious, as we see that interference incidents continue to rise,” Andreas Holmgren, head of the Swedish Transport Agency’s aviation department, told SVT.

Alarm grew last month when suspected Russian jamming disabled GPS systems on a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Pilots were forced to circle for nearly an hour before landing manually with paper charts at Plovdiv Airport in Bulgaria.

Von der Leyen was touring eastern EU member states, regarded by Brussels and NATO as the bloc’s frontline against possible Russian aggression.

Bulgarian authorities said Moscow was behind the interference but declined to investigate further. EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said the bloc would deploy new low Earth orbit satellites to harden defenses and improve detection of GPS jamming.