Russia Turns the Baltic Sea Into a Zone of Navigational Chaos

From January to April this year, a quarter of all flights over the eastern Baltic Sea experienced GPS interference—a scale difficult to comprehend. Only the professionalism of pilots has so far prevented disasters. This is yet another example of the Kremlin’s disregard for human life. Moscow knows full well that the affected countries will not retaliate in kind against Russian aviation. Still, acting together, they are trying to mitigate the effects of this dangerous tactic.

A recent flight to and from Helsinki did not inspire fear: Finnish pilots, like their colleagues across the region, are trained for such situations. Yet concern is growing—Finland is among roughly six countries where the number of GPS disruptions has reached unprecedented levels. According to Swedish National Television, in the first four months of 2025, 122,607 flights over Sweden, Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states experienced navigation failures. In April alone, over 27% of all flights were affected, and in some zones the figure reached 42%.

Two years ago, the situation was different. Navigation disturbances were not uncommon, but constant interference was not normal in peacetime regions. The last relatively stable year for the Baltics was 2023, when Sweden’s Transport Agency recorded 55 cases of jamming or signal spoofing. In 2024, the number of incidents rose to 495, and in just the first four months of 2025—to 733.

The source of the interference has been identified. Traces lead to equipment located in Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Smolensk, and Rostov—cities hosting military facilities. Kaliningrad has effectively become a logistics hub for weapons. Evidently, Russia is blocking or distorting GPS signals to shield these sites from Ukrainian drones. But the scale of these operations endangers civilian ships and aircraft, their crews, and passengers—everyone who relies on global positioning systems.

Pilots can fly without navigation data, but GPS exists to make flights safer and more efficient. Without it, crews are forced to rely on visual navigation and coordination with ground services. This often delays landings and increases carbon emissions. For Russia, however, such consequences are insignificant: the war in Ukraine has already become an environmental catastrophe.

The irony is that constant GPS interference simultaneously threatens both flight safety and the environment—and there is no way to stop it.

Spectators and commentators often accuse European leaders of weakness, as if they fail to see the danger. But that is not the case. They understand the military threat and recognize that hybrid tactics—GPS jamming, cyberattacks by “gig agents,” the operations of a “shadow fleet,” and the use of migration as a weapon—are also forms of aggression.

Politicians see that Russian GPS interference poses an immediate and disproportionate danger not only to the Baltic region but to Europe as a whole: the jammers’ range extends far beyond coastal zones.

But what can be the response? Jam GPS over Russian territory, imperilling passengers? Reply in kind with covert operations and sabotage? Clearly not. Such measures would be immoral, unethical and incompatible with the principles of liberal democracies — and would inevitably provoke dangerous escalation.

States can seek technical and legal means to neutralise the jammers, to halt the activities of the “shadow fleet” and other manifestations of hybrid warfare. But much also depends on citizens. National security demands collective participation: vigilance, a readiness to report suspicious incidents, and an acceptance that everyone bears part of the responsibility.

If a plane needs extra time to land, rather than becoming irritated, we should thank the pilots. Self-satisfied selfishness has no place when an attack is underway—even if it is not always visible.