00:00Assessing claims about alleged Russian GPS interference targeting von der Leyen's plane
00:04Reports that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's plane was targeted by Russian GPS jamming
00:13as she travelled to the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv on 31 August have sparked major speculation.
00:20The Financial Times first broke the story on 1 September, reporting that von der Leyen's plane circled Plovdiv airport for an hour using paper maps to land.
00:29We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia.
00:41But days later on the 4th of September, Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister Gorzhan Karazhov denied that the government had submitted any information about Russian interference to the European Commission.
00:51In an apparent attempt to backpedal on those initial claims, the country's Prime Minister, Rosen Zeliazkov, said there was no evidence of prolonged interference or jamming of the GPS signal around Plovdiv airport.
01:04The Prime Minister later said that although no jamming had been detected by ground instruments, this didn't exclude the possibility of onboard devices detecting jamming.
01:13Analysts from Flightradar24 told Euroverify that according to their data, the aircraft maintained a good GPS signal throughout the flight.
01:21Their data also contradicted the Financial Times' assertion that the aircraft circled Plovdiv for an hour, as flight records reveal that the aircraft landed only a few minutes late.
01:32Although there are a plethora of doubts surrounding this incident, Moscow has intensified GPS jamming targeting planes and ships since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, primarily targeting the area surrounding the Baltic Sea.
01:48The Prime Minister ofotti's
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