Lithuania recently claimed that Russia is using upgraded equipment to manipulate and interfere with GPS signals in Europe. On the 28th, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied these accusations and demanded that Europe provide evidence.
According to Reuters, after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, several European countries accused Russia of carrying out electronic interference activities. The Russian government always denied these claims and accused the West of deliberately spreading false information and slandering Russia.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhalalova told reporters, Please provide at least some evidence before discussing anything else. For now, these are just verbal accusations; they cannot be trusted.
On Tuesday (the 26th), Darius Kuliesius, the deputy director of Lithuanias telecommunications regulatory agency, announced that the number of specialized antennas used for GPS signal deception in Kaliningrad Oblast, Lithuanias westernmost enclave, has increased from three units at the beginning of 2025 to 36 units today.
This highly militarized enclave is located along the Baltic Sea coast, surrounded by Lithuania and Poland, both of which are NATO member states.
According to Lithuanian officials, with the new equipment in place, the maximum radius of Russian signal falsification and interference can reach 450 kilometers, covering a large area in Europe.
According to the diagram released by Lithuanian regulatory authorities, Russian GPS signals are being faked in areas such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Additionally, these fake signals are also present in most parts of Poland, as well as Finland, Sweden, Belarus, and certain regions of Russia and the Baltic Sea region.
Kulyshyn claimed that such interference initially occurred sporadically, with the earliest instance dating back to the NATO summit in Vilnius in 2023. Now, Russian facilities have been fully established, and this interference has become a regular and continuous act of provocation, constantly threatening European security.
He added that due to interference from certain frequency bands, the quality of mobile network services in Lithuania, particularly in areas near Kaliningrad, has significantly declined. Whenever Ukrainian drones attack Russia, the level of signal interference and deception increases dramatically. In Klaipėda, located about 50 kilometers from the Kaliningrad border, the real-time bus tracking system, which relies on GPS positioning, becomes unusable whenever there is increased signal interference.
Its worth mentioning that this isnt the first time Europe has accused Russia of carrying out interference operations. Last year, there were reports that the plane of the European Commission President Vonderellen encountered GPS interference during its flight to Bulgaria. The plane circled in the air for an hour, and both the EU and some foreign media claimed that Russia was responsible for this interference operation.
However, the flight tracking website Flightradar24 reported that the flight was scheduled to take 1 hour and 48 minutes, but in reality, it took 1 hour and 57 minutes. This contradicts the previous claims.
Nevertheless, the EU still claims that the flight duration was longer than planned, and that the aircraft was affected by GPS interference. The Russian side responded by saying, Facts speak louder than false statements.
