The Bulgarian government on Thursday reversed course as it clarified it had no evidence that Russia jammed GPS signals to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plane when it landed at a local airport on Sunday — despite initially making the claim itself. 

On Thursday, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov told parliament that the Commission president’s plane had not been disrupted but had only experienced a partial signal interruption, the kind typically seen in densely populated areas. 

“After checking the plane’s records, we saw that there was no indication of concern from the pilot. Five minutes the aircraft hovered in the waiting area, with the quality of the signal being good all the time,” he told lawmakers. 

The prime minister had previously said the disturbance was due to unintended consequences of electronic warfare in the Ukrainian conflict. 

Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Grozdan Karadzhov, also denied there was evidence of disruption to the GPS signal of the Commission president’s flight. 

“According to empirical data, according to the radio detection, the records of our agencies, civilian and military, there is not a single fact supporting the claim to silence the GPS signal that affected the plane,” Karadzhov told Bulgarian broadcaster bTV on Thursday. 

On Monday, the Financial Times reported that a Commission-chartered plane on a tour of “front-line states” in Europe reportedly lost access to GPS signals while approaching Bulgaria’s Plovdiv airport. The correspondent who was on the plane wrote that the aircraft landed using paper maps and quoted an official saying it circled the airport for an hour. Brussels and Sofia were quick to blame Russia, calling it “blatant interference.” 

The incident made headlines across Europe and prompted reactions from U.S. President Donald Trump, NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte and other top officials.

In past days, analysts have questioned the details of the incident, pointing to flight-tracking data revealing that the GPS signal was never lost and that the plane’s landing was only delayed by nine minutes. Public data also showed the same aircraft had experienced GPS jamming the day before over the Baltics — but not in Bulgaria.

European Commission spokesperson Arianna Podestà on Thursday said the institution was informed by Bulgarian authorities of GPS jamming, echoing a press release shared by the country’s governent authorities on Monday.

“We have never been speaking of the targeting ourselves and I was very clear in saying that we had no informationin this sense. But we are extremely well aware that this is a matter that occurs in our skies and in our seas on a constant manner since the start of the war and therefore this is why its important to tackle it together with our member states,” she told reporters at a briefing in Brussels.