The NATO country accused Russia of violating international airspace regulations 0
(Dan Tri) – Estonia, a NATO member country, accused Russia of violating international airspace by jamming GPS satellite navigation systems on planes in the Baltic region.
A Finair plane (Photo: Reuters).
Estonia accused Russia of violating international airspace regulations by interfering with GPS signals.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said they will resolve the issue with NATO partners and the European Union.
Finnair airline announced on April 29 that it was suspending flights to Tartu in eastern Estonia for a month due to continuous GPS disturbances that prevented two planes from landing.
The Finnish airline said it did not know where the interference originated, but it had previously recorded similar incidents near Russia’s Kaliningrad region and Finland’s eastern border with Russia.
`Russia’s action of jamming GPS over Estonian airspace has affected civil aviation activities in our region. In doing so, Russia violates international regulations,` Foreign Minister Tsahkna accused but
Russia has not commented on this allegation.
Mr. Tsahkna said Estonia would resolve this issue with other NATO and EU countries and that he had discussions with Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Sweden.
Earlier this month, Germany said Russia was most likely behind a series of jamming incidents affecting navigation in the Baltic region.
The German Ministry of Defense pointed to Kaliningrad as a possible source of interference, although it refused to provide any details, citing `military security`.
In March, Newsweek cited an open source intelligence report that reported that more than 1,614 aircraft, including commercial aircraft, had their GPS systems jammed over Eastern European airspace in less than two days over the weekend.
The report said that many of the jammed planes were passenger planes flying in the Baltic Sea region.
Interference or tampering with Global Positioning System (GPS) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals could confuse manned or unmanned aircraft or cause the system to
Newsweek quoted experts as saying that the incident may be related to the Kaliningrad region, Russia’s territory in the Baltic.
Russia is believed to have significant electronic warfare (EW) resources in Kaliningrad.
In the middle of last month, the British Ministry of Defense publicly expressed concern after a plane carrying Minister Grant Shapps suffered GPS jamming while flying near the Russian territory of Kaliningrad.
While London did not clearly attribute responsibility to the party behind the incident, British media raised suspicions that Moscow may have jammed this plane.
In recent times, GPS connectivity problems have been repeatedly reported in the area near Kaliningrad, including in Poland as well as in the Baltic states to southern Sweden and northeastern Germany.
