Sweden accuses Russia of GPS jamming over Baltic Sea

Sweden has accused Russia of being behind a significant rise in instances of GPS signal jamming recorded over the Baltic Sea, raising concerns for aviation in the region.

The Swedish Transport Agency (STA) said reports of disruptions have risen over the past few years, but had now become an almost daily occurrence. It recorded 733 incidents so far in 2025, up from 55 across the whole of 2023.

The agency said the source of the interference had been traced to Russian territory, and also affected shipping. Other European nations have accused Russia of being behind the jamming, which Moscow denies.

The STA report comes days after a plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen was hit by interference.

The pilots of the European Commission president's plane reportedly had to land using paper maps, but did so safely.

Andreas Holmgren, the STA's head of aviation, warned the issue was "serious" and posed "a safety risk for civil aviation".

As well as seeing a massive increase in reports, he said instances of jamming had spread "both geographically and in scope", going from being initially limited to the eastern parts of Swedish airspace over international waters to Swedish land and waters.

Airlines operating in the Baltic region have reported tens of thousands of GPS jamming incidents in the past few years. The Baltic states are bookended by Russian territory.

In June, Sweden and five other nations in the region - Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland - raised the issue with the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), of which Russia is a member state.

The ICAO Council expressed "great concern about the situation and is demanding that Russia fulfil its international obligations and ensure that the disturbances cease immediately".

Despite this, disruptions in the Baltic Sea region "have instead increased", it added.

European governments and experts regularly blame Russia, claiming such practices fit with an alleged Kremlin strategy to generally sow disorder and undermine European security.

Moscow regularly denies accusations of interference or attacks on commercial aviation. No proven link has yet been established between Russia and the rise in GPS jamming.

Von der Leyen's plane had been heading to Bulgaria on Sunday when its onboard telemetry was disrupted due to what a spokesperson described as "blatant interference by Russia".

The European Commission said the incident only reinforced its commitment to "ramp up our defence capabilities and support for Ukraine".

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Financial Times, which reported on the suspected jamming, that its information was "incorrect".

Bulgaria's aviation authority said there had been a "noticeable increase" in GPS incidents since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

While planes can rely on other forms of navigation than GPS, jamming it mid-flight can increase the risk of collisions - either with other planes or by causing the pilot to unintentionally fly into the ground, water or other obstacle.

But the UK's Civil Aviation Authority has played down the significance of GPS jamming, says aircrafts' navigation systems do not rely solely on GPS and so interference should not affect their direct navigation.

It adds that interference occurs primarily near conflict zones as a by-product of military activity, rather than necessarily being a deliberate act.

The STA's figures for 2025 cover up to 28 August. While they include both Swedish and non-Swedish airlines, the agency cautions that they are considered to be significant underestimates of the number of reported incidents, as airlines often report incidents to their own nation's aviation authority.