Russian attack on Von der Leyen: Frame-up or sabotage?
JASIEL PARIS
Last Sunday, August 31, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen landed in Bulgaria after reporting interference with her plane's GPS.The Financial Times reported that the plane was forced to continue flying for an hour without the ability to land, until the pilots landed manually using paper maps. The Bulgarian government stated that they strongly suspected Russia as the attacker, and a day later, several European Commission officials (Finland's Anna-Kaisa Ikonen and Italy's Arianna Podestà) told the world that Russia had tried to sabotage von der Leyen's flight.
From these sources it is worth saying that The Financial Times is the official organ of Anglo-globalism and that the news of the alleged Russian attack comes from Henry Foy, a journalist accompanying von der Leyen with the mission of generating interest and giving international visibility to the trip. The current Bulgarian government, which “suspects Russia,” is a fragile “pro-European” coalition assembled against the Bulgarian social majority. who doesn't see Russia as an enemy. This administration is bent on pleasing the European Commission to gain its favor. They will say whatever is necessary and do whatever they are told (including implementing the economic austerity required to join the euro at the expense of growing inequality among Bulgarians). From European Commission sources, it's enough to know that they have spent years promoting, with half-truths, the idea that Russia is an imminent threat to all Europeans. There is something schizophrenic about the European discourse: Russia as a continental danger and, at the same time, defeated and defeatable in Ukraine. Russia as a GPS jammer and, at the same time, so lacking in technology as to—according to them—steal microchips from refrigerators and washing machines.
What is true?
Since the war in Ukraine, interference such as "jamming" (signal blocking) and "spoofing" (the introduction of false signals) has increased exponentially in European countries near Russia and Ukraine. It is a common phenomenon in countries in conflict (and their neighboring regions), caused by electronic defense systems (defensive!, not offensive) which seek to inhibit communications of enemy aircraft, divert missile trajectories, hide the movement of troops from their own country, blind spy devices to protect critical infrastructure, etc. In the case of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the areas that suffer the greatest interference are, logically, in Eastern Europe and in the Black Sea (which bathes Bulgaria - where von der Leyen was) to protect the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Ukrainian drones.
It is true that Russia has powerful units and technologies dedicated to electronic warfare and, evidently, can use them against Europe (it would be fair: NATO puts its satellite services and cyberwarfare technologies at the service of Ukraine against the Russian army). But the very same British Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) confirms its defensive and accidental nature: "these interferences occur near war zones as a side effect of military activity, not as a deliberate action."
And, what's more, These interferences are generally harmlessThe AAC continues: "They do not affect the navigation of aircraft, which do not depend on GPS., but they have other complex systems." Accelerometers and gyroscopes, secondary radars or ATC vectors, guidance systems during landing (ILS) or ground-based beacons (VOR/DME) are the means used when the American GPS fails, or the rest of the satellite navigation systems (GNSS) - the European Galileo, the Russian Glonass or the Chinese Beidou -. And not analog maps!, as the Financial Times (mis)reports. Even the Estonian armed forces (the Baltic is the region most affected by this interference) claim that its overall impact is minimal, since they work with alternatives to GPS. Its lack of effectiveness suggests that it is not a useful weapon for Russia against European countries..
While it is true that Russia generates some of this interference, it is not the only country generating it: Ukraine also has these capabilities, as do NATO armies. (which they deploy in that same region to cover military maneuvers and arms shipments to Ukraine). There is little way to prove that the sole or main focus of this interference is Russia, as confirmed by sources from the BBC itself:No demonstrable Russian link to the increase in GPS jamming has been established."But European governments routinely blame Russia."
What's fake?
The world's most reliable website for air traffic control, the Swedish one Flightradar24 states that Von der Leyen's plane actually made its transfer more or less on schedule, with a delay of 9 minutes. and not one hour, as the Financial Times (mis)reports. Furthermore, Flightradar24 records that The plane's transponder gave a good GPS signal at all timesThe Swiss website OpenSky Network confirms that the aircraft had GPS connectivity at all times. Furthermore, the flight pattern does not suggest that the aircraft was circling due to lack of landing capability; rather, it appears to be a holding pattern prior to clearance to approach the runways.
It is almost impossible to conceive of such a Russian operation with current technology, given the great distance between the Bulgarian airport and the Russian border (approximately 750 kilometers). If such an attack had been possible, It is normal that other interferences from dozens of aircraft in the area would have been reported.And, of course, it would have been a mistake for Russia not to have attacked the plane on the way there: Attacking in the approach phase to the airport increases the chance of being detected by multiple aircraft and control systems. In the unlikely event that Russia has decided to divert its jamming capabilities to Von der Leyen (in the midst of a season of massive Ukrainian drone attacks), It would be disappointing to go to such lengths to achieve a slight disturbance in the GPS. which, according to Von der Leyen's Falcon aircraft manual, amounts to at most a "slight reduction in situational awareness" that the pilot easily compensates for.
Whether it was a very strange Russian attack, a "fake news" or "false flag" operation, or a minor incident (the same plane suffered the day before some interference common in Estonian airspace), one thing is clear: the political use that Von der Leyen has given to this episode.
Who benefits?
The alleged Russian attack has served, first of all, to try Focusing global attention on Von der Leyen and European politics, which have been overshadowed in recent weeks by direct Trump-Putin negotiations.. It is also important for the West divert media attention from the major Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, which is occurring simultaneously between Putin's Russia and other giants such as Xi Jinping's China and Modi's India, representing the multipolar BRICS world as an alternative to the unipolar NATO-EU West.
The news is also useful for cover up Von der Leyen's poor reception in Bulgaria, where protesters have tried to block her advance by shouting "Nazi" because of the similarity between her rhetoric and Nazi rhetoric. On her trip to Bulgaria, von der Leyen described Russia as a "predator" with traits of "hostile behavior," just as the Nazis referred to Russians as wild animals. The old "Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy" is also revived in a European Commission that sees the Russian hand everywhere: from the US elections to the Catalan independence movement to the GPS. Not to mention The identical rhetoric of the current pan-European rearmament against Russia and the pan-German rearmament against the USSR in the 30s.
Bulgaria has been another destination on a tour aimed at inflaming the warmongering of the countries closest to Russia: the Baltic countries, Finland, Poland, and Romania, the so-called "frontline countries" (another Nazi-inspired term: the "ostfront" or "eastern front"). Before the European Union promised peace and bread to its new partners, now they are talking about producing gunpowder and artillery. And, visiting Bulgaria's largest state-owned military enterprise, Von der Leyen stated that "this is exactly the kind of projects we want to see." During this tour, the president announced that she has A plan almost ready to deploy thousands of European soldiers in Ukraine and increase arms spending fivefoldHe forgot to mention that this increase will come at the expense of social benefits, but it's easy to guess that when the monthly pension or unemployment benefits don't reach homes, Russian hackers will be blamed for having interfered with social security, as they did with Von der Leyen's GPS.
The alleged plane crash has brought a key aspect of rearmament to the forefront of public debate: the military space raceSince May of this year, the main countries of the European Union have been promoting a document that states - against the opinion of all experts - that GPS jamming would not be "random incidents" but "systematic and deliberate actions" and "hybrid warfare attacks" by Russia and Belarus.The paranoia of the Russian attack in Bulgaria is a practical application of this previous paranoid theoretical framework. The EU proposes inflate the power of the European Commission (reinforcing the control of air and sea traffic by the EASA and EMSA agencies) and squander the common budget (more spending on cyber defense, interference-resistant satellite navigation, anti-spoofing functions, authentication systems and signal encryption...). But the key idea is increase the number of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).
This extremely complex and costly operation is one of the most difficult rearmament initiatives to present to taxpayers, business leaders, and NATO partners (it competes with GPS and StarLink, both American). Or it was, until it happened. the episode of the plane in Bulgaria. "Coincidentally" it comes just a few months after the EU issued its warning of imminent Russian interference. In that text. And also "coincidentally," Andrius Kubilius appears one day after the incident, saying that it's time to expand and accelerate European satellite defense. Kubilius is the European Commissioner for Defense and Space (the "space" tag was added to the title a few months ago, also "coincidentally").
This "space race" involves, like all rearmament policies, a massive transfer of public money into private hands (the Eutelsat company), and from European hands to hands outside the European Union (This company, on paper French, has as shareholders India, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and the New York financial company Lazard). Like so many European occurrences, The deployment of new satellite constellations poses a danger: collision and generation of space debris. (which in turn implies greater risks of collision) andin an orbital strip that will be increasingly collapsed (adding the OBT satellites of China, Russia and even Taiwan and many others). There is also the risk that the increase in satellites will increase electromagnetic interference, which is what they accuse Russia of - paradoxically.
Who is harmed?
Our leaders' loud and clear announcement of the near certainty of a Russian attack is an absolute danger to European citizens. Even if it had been a Russian attack, it is reckless to announce it without any material evidence. Especially when NATO has announced that an act of cyberwarfare could be sufficient grounds to invoke Article 5 and trigger a global war with nuclear prospects.In Europe, the burden of proof, which is the essence of law, has been reversed: in case of doubt "Russia is guilty" (again, a classic fascist reference) and no demonstration or accountability to the population is necessary, who, in addition to blind faith, are required to bet on it with their own money or the blood of their fellow soldiers.
This acceptance by our media that "leaders always tell the truth" ("der Führer hat immer recht") puts us on the most dangerous path governments can take. Without a critical press, we're told today it was Russia, and that's it. Tomorrow we may be told that the GPS has been turned off by its owner, Donald Trump. The next attack may be carried out by "Euroskeptic" governments that the European Commission doesn't like and that should be sanctioned: Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia.…Serbia is already being accused by Bulgaria's former deputy interior minister of GPS interference (the two countries have had poor relations since the recognition of Kosovo).
Perhaps the European Commission will blame the next incident on certain ethnic groups (like the Russian minority in Bulgaria or Romania) and promote discriminatory measures like those we have seen in Ukraine and the Baltic countries. Or perhaps they will tell us that They were hackers and it's time for citizens to sacrifice their privacy on social networks.. O climate change (solar pulses cause GPS interference) and you need to give up driving in polluting cars, for the sake of Von der Leyen's Falcon. Or maybe they'll tell us they've been groups with cyber-terrorist capacity of populist, sovereignist, and dissident citizens…and that you yourself are suspected of thinking like them.
Jasiel Paris He is a political scientist with a master's degree in security. He was a professional soldier and works as a media analyst.
