A plane carrying the Spanish minister of defense has suffered from a suspected Russian GPS jamming attack. Officials from the Iberian nation said the Airbus A330 carrying Margarita Robles, 68, encountered what the Daily Mail described as a “disturbance” while traveling to Lithuania. She was bound for Siauliai airbase in the north of the country, where she was scheduled to meet her counterpart, Dovile Sakaliene. During the flight, the plane flew over the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which is separated from the rest of Russia by the NATO member states of Lithuania and Latvia. A Spanish defense ministry spokesperson said, “There has been an attempt to disrupt the GPS signal, but as our aircraft has an encrypted system, it was not affected.” The incident comes on the back of several flashpoints connected to Russia. Between 19 and 23 drones were shot down in Polish airspace. A jet carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Bulgaria suffered GPS disruption and had to make an emergency landing. Sky News reports the Spanish plane was also carrying the families of NATO pilots defending the alliance’s eastern border.
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