site.btaInterior Minister Denies Cyberattack in GPS Disruption of European Commission President's Plane

Interior Minister Daniel Mitov told the Bulgarian National Television on Monday that the disruption of the GPS signal of the flight carrying European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen was not a cyber attack. 

“We were immediately notified of the problem. The Ministry of Interior’s task, through the Cybercrime Department of the General Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime (GDCOC), was to investigate whether this could have been a cyberattack. We can state unequivocally that this is not the case,” Mitov said.

“We will cooperate with the other institutions responsible for the operational investigation of the incident and for uncovering the truth as it is,” the Minister added.

Mitov emphasized that since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, this type of GPS signal jamming has been occurring regularly in regions near the conflict. “The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has a protocol for this matter,” he added. “When such jamming occurs, there is an instrumental landing system in place to ensure safety.”

“What the Russian Federation says has absolutely no significance. We cannot obtain reliable information from them, so we must independently investigate what actually happened,” Mitov said, in response to the Kremlin’s denial of any Russian involvement in the GPS signal interference affecting Ursula von der Leyen’s aircraft.

Earlier on Monday, The Financial Times reported that "a suspected Russian interference attack targeting Ursula von der Leyen disabled GPS navigation services at a Bulgarian airport and forced the European Commission president's plane to land using paper maps."

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia was involved in the GPS signal jamming.

The EC was informed about the incident by Bulgarian authorities, said EC spokespersons Arianna Podesta and Anna-Kaisa Itkonen. According to them, the Bulgarian authorities have informed the EC that they suspect the incident may have been caused by Russian interference.