The Coast Guard of Finland said that it had detected constant disruptions in satellite navigation signals over the Baltic Sea from April. In recent weeks, tankers have been spoofing location data in order to hide visits to Russia.

Lulu Ranne, Finland's Interior Minister, said last week that Finland believes Russia was behind the disturbances in Global Navigation Satellite System signals (GNSS) or GPS (Global Positioning System), used for navigation in Finland and in the Baltic Sea Region.

The Coast Guard reported that the GNSS jamming it has detected in increasing numbers since April in Gulf of Finland has caused ships to lose their course or get lost at sea, resulting in close calls where Finnish authorities had to alert vessels to stop them from getting too close to islands or shallow water.

The Coast Guard stated that the disturbances led to malfunctions of vessels' Automatic Identification Systems, which allows electronic navigation.

Pekka Niittyla, commander of the Gulf of Finland Coast Guard, said that in recent weeks they had also noticed that the (AIS) devices were intentionally turned off. This has led to the online location system displaying incorrect information about the vessel.

Russia denied earlier interfering in communication and satellite networks.

Niittyla stated that the Coast Guard had detected the spoofing around ten different times by different tankers in Russian ports near St Petersburg.

He said: "Based on our assessment this is related either to the evasion or consequences of sanctions."

"For instance, if the country purchasing Russian oil doesn't want to know that it was bought from Russia, then the seller or vessel could use spoofing in order to make it appear as though the vessel hadn't visited Russia."

The Coast Guard believes that Russia jams the signals in order to protect its oil port located at the eastern end of Gulf of Finland against Ukrainian drones or air strikes. Reporting from Helsinki by Anne Kauranen; Editing and proofreading by Ros Russell

(source: Reuters)