MADRID: A plane carrying Spain’s defense minister suffered an attack on its GPS navigation while flying near Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad on Wednesday, a ministry source said, the latest such incident blamed on Moscow.
“There was an attempt to scramble the GPS signal” of the plane transporting Margarita Robles to Lithuania, the defense ministry source said, adding that the flight had an encrypted navigation system and was not “affected.”
“It seems to be normal on this trip, including for commercial flights” that pass close to the small territory wedged between EU and NATO members Poland and Lithuania, the source said.
Robles appeared to blame Russia during a news conference with her Lithuanian counterpart Dovile Sakaliene at Lithuania’s Siauliai air base.
“We all have the right to fly and travel across all European territory without, as we experienced this morning, interference by everyone knows who,” Robles said.
Sakaliene called the incident “another illustration that Russia is a neighbor that does not follow any rules and does not care about the damage it may cause.”
Earlier this month, the European Commission said Russia was suspected of jamming the GPS of EU chief Ursula von der Leyen’s plane as it prepared to land in Bulgaria.
But Bulgaria’s prime minister said there was “nothing unusual” about the GPS jamming, saying it was “one of the consequences” of Russia’s three-year-old war in Ukraine and ruling out an investigation.
Sweden’s Transport Agency has reported that interference incidents with global navigation satellite systems in Swedish airspace spiked from 55 to 733 between 2023 and August 18, 2025, blaming Russia.
The incidents have spread in scope, occurring over Swedish land and sea as well as international waters, the agency said.
In early June, Sweden and five other Baltic Sea countries — Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland — raised the issue with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), of which Russia is a member state.
The ICAO Council “expressed grave concern over the situation” and demanded that Russia end the interference, but incidents in the Baltic Sea region have increased, the agency said.