Russian GPS jamming won’t stop after Ukraine war, warns Lithuania

LRT reported the information.

“This didn’t start two or three years ago — it’s been happening constantly to some degree. To think these problems will disappear once the war ends… They definitely won’t. They will persist. Believing we’ll just sit back and do nothing after the war — that’s not the answer we should be looking for,” Sabutis said.

“We shouldn’t think we’ll return to our previous lives — that world no longer exists. It has changed, the geopolitical situation has changed. This means we must find ways to live with it, to address these issues, and think about the future — how to prevent such problems from arising,” he said.

Lithuania and 12 other EU countries have urged the European Commission to take action over disruptions to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) across the bloc.

In a letter to the Commission, they stressed that GNSS signal disruptions are not isolated incidents but systematic, recurring, and deliberate actions by Russia and Belarus aimed at undermining the region’s infrastructure, particularly communications.

Following the appeal, Seimas Speaker Saulius Skvernelis stated that the disruptions were linked to Russia’s attempts to protect the Kaliningrad region from possible air attacks and that regional states would face this issue as long as the Kremlin continues its war in Ukraine.

However, Transport Minister Sabutis disagreed, arguing that signal-jamming equipment was used even earlier, for example, in the Soviet Union to block foreign radio broadcasts.

"Back then, the state, whose successor is now Russia, and partly Belarus, already used equipment to jam various signals. There was no GPS or anything like that yet, but they were already jamming. To say something has changed is too bold. In that regard, nothing has changed and won’t change," the minister said.