BREAKING: Russia Tried To Assassinate The President of The EU And a German General This Weekend Von der Leyen’s plane jammed on approach and Germany’s top general’s two similar Baltic incidents aren’t “glitches.” They’re a pattern—and Europe knows it. Dean Blundell Sep 2 Date: September 2, 2025 If you were hoping the Kremlin’s hybrid toolbox was gathering dust, think again. On August 31, the aircraft carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen lost satellite navigation on approach to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The crew did what well-trained pilots do when GNSS goes dark: revert to ground-based procedures and put the plane safely on the runway. No crash, no panic—but a flashing red light for anyone paying attention to aviation and security. Within a day, Germany’s highest-ranking general, Carsten Breuer—the Bundeswehr’s Inspector General—told reporters he has personally faced GPS interference twice in the Baltic theater: once over the Baltic Sea and once in Lithuanian airspace. His framing was blunt and professional: sabotage, espionage, hybrid action—very often traceable to state actors. You don’t need a classified annex to connect those dots. What actually happened (and how planes stay safe) Von der Leyen’s flight: Satellite navigation degraded on approach, so controllers and crew shifted to terrestrial aids (think ILS/VOR/DME) and standard procedures. Result: safe landing. Breuer’s two events: Separate instances of GPS interference in a known hot zone for electronic warfare—Baltic Sea routes and Lithuanian airspace—consistent with the region’s post-2022 surge in GNSS jamming/spoofing. Key point: Jamming does not equal instant catastrophe. Commercial and state aircraft are built for layered redundancy. But sustained interference does raise risk by eroding margins, forcing delays/diversions, and complicating approaches—especially in poor weather or at fields reliant on satellite-based procedures. Why this matters This is a pattern, not a one-off. GNSS interference across Europe—especially around Russia, Belarus, Kaliningrad, and military corridors—has spiked since 2022. VIP/state flights share the same sky with commercial traffic; when the spectrum turns hostile, everyone is in the splash zone. The method is the message. Flipping the navigation dial to chaos at sensitive moments is classic hybrid warfare: intimidate, test reactions, normalize reckless behavior, and build deniability—without firing a shot. Civil aviation is in the crosshairs by proximity. Even if a VIP jet isn’t “targeted,” area-wide jamming doesn’t care. It can ripple onto civilian routes, training areas, and busy corridors, turning routine legs into rolling dice games. Assassination attempt? Let’s keep it accurate and defensible. Officials haven’t labeled either case an “assassination attempt.” The better frame is suspected Russian GNSS interference—a reckless, escalatory hybrid tactic that endangers civil and state aviation. The risk is real without overselling the intent. HOWEVER, there’s only one reason to render a plane ‘inoperative” in flight: to kill everyone on board in “an accident.” The strategic stakes Safety: More go-arounds, diversions, and workload spikes in cockpits and control rooms mean higher aggregate risk. Deterrence: If Europe treats this as ambient noise, the threshold rises for what counts as “unacceptable.” Escalation management: Hybrid tools are designed to live in the gray zone. The policy question is how to impose costs without stumbling into a ladder Russia wants to climb. What Europe and NATO will (quietly) do next Operational hardening: Tighter NOTAMs, more conservative routing in hot zones, defaulting to non-GNSS procedures where needed, and broader crew briefings for spectrum-denied ops. Technical countermeasures: Faster data-sharing on interference, better cockpit/ATC awareness tools, and investment in resilient nav stacks (augmentations, GBAS expansion, improved RAIM, interference detection/alerting). Policy posture: Public language will stay measured to avoid handing Moscow spectacle or pretexts. Behind the scenes, expect more coordinated counter-EW work across NATO and the EU and tighter controls on state flight visibility. Within a day of Brussels confirming suspected Russian GPS interference on Ursula von der Leyen’s approach into Bulgaria, Germany’s top general, Carsten Breuer, revealed he has faced GPS jamming twice in the Baltic region—once over the Baltic Sea and once in Lithuanian airspace—underscoring a widening pattern of reckless hybrid operations that endanger both civil and state aviation. This isn’t about a single “jam.” It’s about normalizing a battlespace, assassination attempts of political and military leaders, and Russia wants to take them out of circulation. Hybrid attacks are designed to look like nuisances—until a nuisance becomes an incident. Europe doesn’t have the luxury of treating this as static and can’t ‘downplay’ Putin's latest attempt to “purge” the deck of his global enemies standing between him and Russia’s domination of the EU. Thanks for reading! This post is public, so feel free to share it. Invite your friends and earn rewards