BRUSSELS — A plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was hit by GPS interference on Sunday, with Russia suspected of being behind the attack.

“We can confirm there was GPS jamming but the plane landed safe,” Arianna Podestà, deputy spokesperson of the Commission, said in a statement shared with POLITICO.

Von der Leyen is on a tour visiting “frontline states” Latvia, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania, in an effort to underscore the European Union’s commitment to ramping up its defence and security capabilities.

She arrived in Bulgaria on Sunday, where she visited an arms producer in Sopot, accompanied by Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov.

The jet carrying von der Leyen to Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second-largest city, was unable to use electronic navigational aids as a result of the interference, which forced the pilot to land using paper maps, the FT reported on Monday.

Podestà said the Commission received information from Bulgarian authorities indicating that “they suspect this blatant interference was carried out by Russia.”

“This incident underlines the urgency of the President’s current trip to frontline Member States, where she has seen firsthand the everyday threats from Russia and its proxies,” she said.

GPS jamming and spoofing prevent aircraft from accessing navigation systems such as U.S. GPS or European Galileo, or distort the location data they receive, and are increasingly being deployed as a means to disturb civilian or military operations.

European governments have warned about this form of deliberate interference, stating that it has been occurring in the Baltic Sea region since 2022, and have demanded that the European Commission take action against Russia and Belarus.

Mathieu Pollet contributed reporting.