Active Conflicts & News Megathread September 01, 2025

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[u/adfjsdfjsdklfsd]

A few days after bombing the representations of the UK and the European Union in Kiev, Russia has now spoofed the GPS of the plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen on a tour visiting several "frontline states" to reaffirm Europe's commitment to defend Ukraine and itself against Russia.

While nothing happened, apart from the pilots needing to switch to manual navigation, this seems to illustrate a new Russian strategy of confronting Europe more directly.

I just wonder: for what reason? I can't help but notice the close temporal proximity to the Alaska meeting. So is this born out of boldness, seeing an opportunity to fracture European will and to dissuade Europe it from further support to Ukraine - or out of desperation, recognising that Russia's window of opportunity is rapidly closing?

[u/RobotWantsKitty → u/adfjsdfjsdklfsd]

Flightradar24:

We are seeing media reports of GPS interference affecting the plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Some reports claim that the aircraft was in a holding pattern for 1 hour.

This is what we can deduce from our data.

• The flight was scheduled to take 1 hour and 48 minutes. It took 1 hour and 57 minutes.
• The aircraft's transponder reported good GPS signal quality from take-off to landing.

[u/anonymfus → u/RobotWantsKitty]

The aircraft's transponder reported good GPS signal quality from take-off to landing.

Which is pretty much expected if GPS spoofing was the case, because the whole concept of spoofing is based on aircraft's inability to distinguish between real and spoofed GPS signals, as opposed to GPS jamming when attacked aircraft may notice an increase in noise-to-signal ratio and eventual signal loss.

[u/RobotWantsKitty → u/anonymfus]

The Politico article doesn't say that spoofing took place, I don't know why OP said that it did