Grant Shapps on an RAF aircraft to Poland (Image: Ministry of Defence)
Russia is believed to have jammed the satellite signal on the RAF aircraft the Defence Secretary was flying in during a visit to Poland.
The GPS signal and internet connection were jammed for around 30 minutes as Grant Shapps’s aircraft flew on the fringes of Kaliningrad on Wednesday.
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Mr Shapps, who was travelling with his team and a group of journalists, was assured the electronic attack did not threaten the safety of the aircraft.
Despite GPS navigation being down, pilots assured the team that multiple other means of navigating remained.
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A defence source said: "While the RAF are well prepared to deal with this, it still puts an unnecessary risk on civilian aircraft and could potentially endanger people’s lives.
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"There is no excuse for this and it’s widely irresponsible on Russia’s part."
The Defence Secretary was returning from a visit to Poland where he watched hundreds of troops taking part in the biggest exercise since the Cold War.
A defence source said the jamming was understood to be “directly related to Putin’s attack on Ukraine and the sensitivities around Kaliningrad”.
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Since the Russian invasion, Ukraine has become the most radio-jammed place in the world, and electronic warfare remains a powerful hidden hand in the conflict.
Russia has more jamming equipment capable of overpowering Ukrainian signals which it achieves by broadcasting on the same frequencies at higher power.
Russia’s jamming capabilities risk damaging the effectiveness of Ukraine’s drones, sidelining a key component of Ukraine’s arsenal.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin continues to mass-produce its own fleet of drones and import others from allies such as Iran.
Ukraine is now locked in an arms race against Russia to make technological changes to avoid tampering.
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In Kaliningrad, Russia has built a formidable military presence, spanning nuclear weapons, its Baltic fleet and tens of thousands of soldiers.
The Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea is sandwiched between Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east.
Only a narrow notch of strategic Polish territory, known as the Suwalki Gap, separates Kaliningrad from Russian-ally Belarus.
Western military planners warn the area, which only stretches 100 kilometres, would likely be one of the Russian president’s first targets were he to choose to escalate the war in Ukraine into a direct confrontation with NATO.
The exclave, which has a population of nearly 1 million, was German territory until after World War II, when it was known as K？nigsberg.
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The Soviet Union took control of the region from Germany after the war, renamed it Kaliningrad and expelled the German population.
The incident involving the Defence Secretary’s plane came on the same day the Russian President delivered the crude warning he was prepared for nuclear war.
Speaking on state television, Vladimir Putin boasted that his nuclear forces were on “constant alert”, adding “weapons exist in order to use them”.
He continued: “From the military-technical point of view we are, of course, prepared.
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“[The US is] developing their components. So are we. That doesn’t mean, in my view, that they are prepared to start this nuclear war tomorrow. If they are — what can we do? We’re prepared.”
Mr Shapps dismissed the Russian dictator’s threats as “irresponsible sabre-rattling” and retorted that he should “drive back east and get out of the democratic country he decided to invade two years ago”.