Russia is suspected of targeting a Spanish Air Force plane with a GPS attack following an electronic ‘disturbance’ on a flight carrying Spain’s defence minister.

This incident is believed to have occurred in the morning when the Spanish Airbus A330 with top minister Margarita Robles on board flew over the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad en route to Lithuania.

According to the Spanish government’s schedule, Robles was set to meet her Lithuanian counterpart Dovile Sakaliene at the Siauliai airbase in the northern part of the country on Wednesday morning.

Several relatives of Spanish airmen serving in the new NATO air defence mission on the border with Russia were onboard with Robles. 

The Spanish contingent, known as the Vilkas mission, from the Lithuanian word for wolf, last week intercepted eight Russian aircraft operating over the Baltic Sea, Spain’s Defence Ministry said on Wednesday. 

It comes amid heightened tension with Russia, which has been accused of aggressively testing NATO’s responses to threats. 

Yesterday, Danish officials hinted that Russia may have been behind a swarm of drones that left Copenhagen airport incapacitated, disrupting around 100 flights and leaving 20,000 passengers stranded.  

Danish intelligence has now said the NATO member is facing a ‘high threat of sabotage’ after the incident.

‘We are facing a high threat of sabotage in Denmark. Someone may not necessarily want to attack us, but rather stress us out and see how we react,’ Flemming Drejer, Director of Operations at Denmark’s intelligence service PET, told a press conference. 

The latest threat to Europe comes just weeks after Russia was suspected of jamming a jet carrying European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen to Bulgaria. 

The plane carrying the EU chief was forced to land at Plovdiv, Bulgaria, using only paper maps, when a surprise interference attack suddenly disabled the GPS navigation system.

The incident was likely the result of a ‘blatant’ Russian sabotage operation, Bulgarian authorities told the European Commission. 

‘We can indeed confirm that there was GPS jamming, but the plane landed safely in Bulgaria,’ European Commission spokeswoman Arianna Podesta said.

‘We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia.’

‘The whole airport area GPS went dark,’ an official brief on the incident told the Financial Times.  

Estonia and neighbouring Finland have also blamed Russia for jamming GPS navigation devices in the region’s airspace. Russia has denied interfering with communication and satellite networks.

Finland’s military has said Russia uses GPS jamming in the region to protect Russia’s Baltic Sea oil ports, military sites and other strategic assets from Ukrainian drone attacks.

GPS ‘jamming’ or ‘spoofing’, which disrupts access to the satellite-based navigation system, is a tactic Russia has previously used to wreak havoc with civilian life.

The technique has historically been employed by military and intelligence services to protect sensitive locations, but Russia appears to have escalated its use of the tactic. 

Reports from Ukraine suggest that Russian systems can now interfere with GPS satellites up to 1,200 miles above the surface of the planet, putting a huge number of satellites in low-Earth orbit at risk of interference. 

European officials are starting to wake up to the effects of Russian GPS jamming, with European commissioner for defence and space Andrius Kubilius calling for increased coordination to counter hybrid Russian attacks, 

He said: ‘Russia’s hybrid and total war strategy in Europe is clear – from attacks on Ukraine to sabotage in Germany, disruption of Baltic communication lines, and ongoing interference in political processes across the region.

These actions show that hybrid threats are happening now, and we must respond with higher investments and even stronger technology.’

Earlier today, Lithuania’s parliament granted its armed forced the power to shoot down any unmanned drone violating its airspace.  

Lithuania’s army is currently able to target drones only if they are determined to be armed or pose an imminent danger to objects important to the state.

This will change under a law that was passed with the backing of 117 of the 141 members of Lithuanian parliament under emergency procedures and will be valid in the NATO and European Union member state from October. 

‘Now we can quickly react in any way, including the destruction of drones’, said Defence Minister Dovile Sakaliene.

‘Our laws and procedures were not adapted to current threats… we can now react at the speed of lightning’.

The new law authorises Lithuania’s chief of defence to close down parts of Lithuanian airspace and to shoot down any drone inside ‘which violates rules set out by the chief of defence’.

NATO said on Tuesday it would use ‘all necessary military and non-military tools’ to defend itself after what it said was ‘a pattern of increasingly irresponsible behaviour’ by Moscow following recent violations of NATO member states’ airspace.

Lithuania asked NATO in August for more air defences after two military drones chrashed into its territory from Belarus, and Denmark said on Tuesday that drones that halted flights at its main airport on Monday were linked to a series of suspected Russian drone incursions and other disruptions across Europe.

Estonia said on Friday that three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets had violated its airspace for 12 minutes before being escorted out by NATO fighter jets.

Poland said some 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace on the night of September 9-10, prompting NATO jets to shoot some of them down and the alliance to beef up the defence of Europe’s eastern flank.