Baltic formins: Tartu airport under Russia's hybrid attack

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said that the GPS jamming at Tartu airport is a Russian hybrid attack. Photo: Kristjan Teedema

The foreign ministers of the Baltic states warn that the GPS signal interference, as a result of which two Finnair flights from the Finnish capital Helsinki to the southern Estonian university town of Tartu were unable to land at Tartu airport last week, is being carried out by Russia and is so dangerous that sooner or later it can cause a plane crash.

The foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania told the Financial Times (FT) that GPS jamming across the Baltics has increased in recent weeks. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said that the GPS jamming at Tartu airport is a Russian hybrid attack.

«We consider what is happening with GPS as part of Russia's hostile activities, and we will definitely discuss it with our allies. Such actions are a hybrid attack and are a threat to our people and security, and we will not tolerate them,» Tsahkna told the Financial Times.

«If someone turns off your headlights while you’re driving at night, it gets dangerous. Things in the Baltic region near Russian borders are now getting too dangerous to ignore,» Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, told the Financial Times.

Roman Kulikov, operations manager at Tartu airport, said that the Finnair flight that took off from Helsinki on the night between Sunday and Monday landed in Tartu at 1:04 a.m. safely and without problems.