Western troops in Ukraine are ‘legitimate targets’ – DW – 09/05/2025

Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport Grozdan Karadjov has told local media there was no evidence of signal jamming of the plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Karadjov told broadcaster bTV’s “This Morning” show that according to records from Bulgaria’s Communications Regulation Commission (CRC), no failure of GPS signal involving von der Leyen’s flight was found.

“The only thing that the Bulgarian Civil Aviation Administration has submitted to the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is that there is this report from the conversation between the tower and the pilot,” Karadjov said.

“This is a report from the pilot that he had issues, some problem with the GPS. Minor issues is the last phrase, some minor problems,” he added.

The European Commission on Monday said that its president was en route to Bulgaria when her plane faced deliberate GPS jamming. 

“We can confirm there was GPS jamming, but the plane landed safe,” Arianna Podesta, a commission spokesperson, said shortly after the incident.

Podesta said the EU received information from Bulgarian authorities that “they suspect this blatant interference was carried out by Russia.” 

Bulgaria’s BTA news agency cited Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov as saying that there had been distorted interpretations of the incident involving the EU chief.

Zhelyazkov attributed the interference to Russian operations relating to radio frequencies, specifically satellite jamming from systems based in Crimea, that were being carried out as part of electronic warfare with Ukraine.