Russia manipulates global positioning systems in an effort to prevent drones from approaching President Vladimir Putin, according to a new report from the Center for Advanced Defense (C4ADS), a U.S.-based research foundation. Russia reportedly spoofs GPS systems by sending out, on a vast scale, false location data to civilian ships or other users. The country’s practice of mimicking GPS signals has been exposed previously, but the new research shows the tactic is far more pervasive than previously known. The report, the result of a year-long investigation, used publicly available data and commercial technologies to analyze patterns of spoofing in the Russian federation. “We demonstrate that these activities are much larger in scope, more diverse in geography, and longer in duration than any public reporting suggests to date,” the report states. “We find a close correlation between movements of the Russian head of state and GNSS spoofing events. We believe Russian Federal Protective Service (FSO) operates mobile systems to support this activity.”