Russia has informed international regulators that it considers civilian navigation and communication satellites in Europe, which are also used to support Ukraine, to be legitimate targets and can jam their signals on that basis. About this informs Space Intel Report.
“The Ministry of Digital Development and Communications of Russia informed international regulators – the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Communications Regulatory Council that European countries that use navigation and broadcast satellites for both civilian and military purposes, including to support Ukraine, have lost the right to protest if the signals of these satellites are jammed by Russia.”, – stated in the message.
It will be recalled that in March, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Finland, France and the Netherlands appealed to the ITU with a complaint about Russian interference in satellite communication in Europe. Another 17 EU countries and Great Britain supported the initiative, which requires Russia to stop its destructive actions.
In 2024, disruptions in the work of the leading European satellite operators, in particular Eutelsat and SES, which broadcast television, radio and support the functioning of air navigation systems, were recorded.
One of the most high-profile cases of interference was the appearance of Russian military propaganda in the spring: it was broadcast twice on the children’s channel BabyTV in the Netherlands and other European countries. Last year, the companies Eutelsat (France) and SES (Sweden, Luxembourg) conducted an investigation and established that the signals were deliberately jammed from the temporarily occupied Crimea and the Kaliningrad region.
