Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said today that there was no interference with the GPS of the plane over Bulgaria carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, but that there was only a partial interruption of the signal, which, as he stated, is common for densely populated areas.
"After checking the plane's data, we saw that there were no signs of distress on the part of the pilot. The plane hovered in the holding area for five minutes and the signal quality was good the whole time," Zheljazkov told Bulgarian MPs.
Zhelyazhkov previously stated that the outage was caused by the unintended consequences of electronic warfare in the conflict in Ukraine.
Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister, Grozdan Karadzov, also denied there was evidence of an interruption in the GPS signal of the plane carrying Von der Leyen en route to a Romanian military base on the Black Sea, causing it to land at a local airport in Bulgaria on Sunday.
"According to empirical data, according to radio reconnaissance, data from our agencies, civilian and military, there is no fact that would support the claim that the GPS signal that affected the plane was silent," Karadjov told Bulgarian television bTV today.
