Bulgaria debunks von der Leyen jet claims

The EU Commission president claimed that Russia had interfered with her airplane’s navigation systems.

There is no evidence Russia interfered with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s airplane during her recent flight to Bulgaria, the country’s authorities have said. The European Commission earlier claimed Bulgarian authorities had confirmed the incident.

On Sunday von der Leyen’s pilots allegedly reported issues with their navigation systems while landing in Plovdiv on a PR exercise to visit “Europe’s frontline states.” The Financial Times Brussels bureau chief Henry Foy, who was on board the press junket, reported that the flight was “forced to circle for an hour.” EU officials later told Sky of suspected “blatant Russian interference.”

NATO chief Mark Rutte claimed “we are all on the eastern flank now, whether you live in London or Tallinn. ”

However, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov has outright contradicted Brussels’ claim and the reporting, telling parliament on Thursday that no evidence of a Russian attack had been found and that von der Leyen’s plane did not suffer any serious issues, only short-term signal degradation, which is common in densely populated areas.

“After checking the onboard records, we saw that the pilot did not express any concerns. The plane was in the holding area for about five minutes, and the signal quality remained good the entire time,” Zhelyazkov was quoted as saying by Bild.

Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Grozdan Karadjov has also confirmed that there is “not a single fact that confirms the claim that the plane’s GPS signal was jammed,” citing empirical data, radio intercepts, recordings of our civil and military departments.

In an interview with bTV, Karadjov also denied sharing any information about the incident with the European Commission.

Moscow on Thursday dismissed the “preposterous” accusations pushed by Brussels, pointing to publicly available flight tracking data which indicates that von der Leyen’s jet had reported good GPS signal quality throughout the flight.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that the EU’s accusations were “not just paranoia, but a cynical plot to distract their own population from the EU’s worsening economic situation and from considering the real culprits behind the European crisis – the irresponsible, kleptocratic political elites of the European Union.”

Since 2024, the Nordic and Baltic countries have accused Russia of disrupting communications on planes and ships as a form of “hybrid warfare,” allegations Russia has denied.