The foreign ministers in the Baltics warn of a possible plane disaster over the Baltic Sea after a long period of major GPS disturbances in the area.
The Financial Times reports.
On Thursday and Friday, two Finnair flights en route from Helsinki in Finland to Tartu in Estonia were forced to turn around when GPS interference prevented the planes from navigating to the airport in the southeast of the country.
50,471 in Putin’s graves
The disruptions now occur so often that Finnair has chosen to stop all its flights to Tartu for the next month.
– We consider the GPS interference to be part of Russia’s hostile activities, and we will definitely discuss this with our allies. Such actions are hybrid attacks and pose a threat to our people and our security, and we will not tolerate them, says Margus Tsakhana, Estonia’s foreign minister, to the Financial Times.
On Monday 29 April, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was in Kyiv, Ukraine, to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyj. Here he apologizes on behalf of NATO allies who have not delivered what they have promised. Reporter: Helena Ringheim / Dagbladet TV. Video: AP
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– Can’t be ignored
Tens of thousands of civilian flights have been affected by GPS interference in recent months, writes the newspaper and refers to experts.
The disturbances are caused by so-called GPS jamming, and also affect ship traffic in the Baltic Sea. Although no one has claimed responsibility for the problems, Baltic and other Western authorities point the finger at Russia.
– A critical turning point
– If you turn on any of the lights on your car when you drive at night, it becomes dangerous. The situation in the Baltic region near the Russian borders is now so dangerous that it cannot be ignored, says Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, to the Financial Times.
It is believed that the Russian authorities interfere with GPS signals both from mainland Russia and the exclave of Kaliningrad, which lies between Poland and Lithuania, the newspaper writes further.
A Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa has hit civilian infrastructure and houses on Monday afternoon. Video: X / @Tetyanaukraina / @jurgen_nauditt
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Unclear motivation
Why Russia should cause GPS interference in the area is unclear. One possible theory Baltic authorities point to is that Russia is trying to protect Kaliningrad from possible Ukrainian drone attacks.
Ukraine has never attacked Kaliningrad with drones before, but the Russian exclave is in theory well within the range of newly developed Ukrainian drones.
– Serious reactions
At the beginning of April, Ukraine hit several targets deep inside Russian territory, more than 1,300 kilometers from the front line.
Ukrainian drone attacks against the Russian oil and gas industry earlier in April are said to have put almost 15 percent of Russia’s capacity to process petroleum out of action, according to estimates from Reuters.
