Italy considers hiding flight routes of officials after von der Leyen incident - Media
Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy (photo: Getty Images)
Italy is considering concealing flight routes of its officials after Russia jammed the signal of a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, reports The Guardian.
Sources from the Italian Ministry of Defense told the publication that Rome is considering options to classify state flights, restrict the publication of data on the prime minister's office website, and block the display of routes on specialized tracking services.
According to them, the idea was first proposed by Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto a few months ago, when navigation interference began occurring more frequently near Russian airspace.
The Guardian noted that in February the Italian prime minister's plane was removed from Flightradar, a popular flight tracking service, although it remained visible on other platforms. Officials are now considering the possibility of completely hiding all flights of the prime minister and ministers from such websites.
In addition, following the incident in Bulgaria involving the head of the European Commission, the EU began discussing measures to improve the security of leaders' flights, as cases of GPS jamming and "spoofing" — interference with radionavigation that distorts data — have become more frequent since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Incident with the European Commission President's plane
On September 1, the plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made an emergency landing in Bulgaria.
The reason was Russian interference, which disrupted the GPS system on the aircraft. The pilot was forced to land using paper maps.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has already claimed that Russia was allegedly not involved in the incident.
