Russia regularly disrupts GPS signals in the Baltic Sea area, posing a danger to civilian aviation, according to the foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in an interview with the Financial Times, as reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
“If someone turns off your headlights while you’re driving at night, it becomes dangerous. The situation in the Baltic region near the Russian borders is now too dangerous to ignore,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu added that the Baltic countries consider the disruption of GPS signals a “hybrid attack by the Russian Federation,” which poses a danger to their citizens.
“We will definitely discuss this with our allies,” the official added.
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs also emphasized that the Baltic countries “take incidents” with GPS “seriously” and “communicate with colleagues from other countries” on this issue. According to experts’ estimates, tens of thousands of civilian flights have been affected in recent months due to GPS signal disruptions. For example, on April 25th and 26th, two Finnair aircraft were forced to return to Helsinki Airport after takeoff due to such disruptions.
An unnamed senior official speaking to FT suggested that Russia may be disrupting GPS signals to protect Kaliningrad from potential attacks by Ukrainian drones.
As previously reported, reports of widescale GPS disruption from Poland to Sweden emerged from mid-December last year. Independent analysts had earlier suggested that the source of the disruptions is a radio-electronic warfare base located in Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast.
