By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) – The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is this week investigating a series of complaints from Ukraine and European countries about satellite interference that has affected navigation services and television programs, the body confirmed.
The interference has disrupted GPS signals and could endanger air traffic control, the European Union said in a statement to the ITU earlier this month. In some cases, children’s television channels were affected, showing violent images of the war in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian complaint to the UN body, dated June 3 and seen by Reuters, documented at least 11 cases of interference, affecting dozens of Ukrainian TV programs in the past three months.
It calls on the body to “take all possible measures to stop the interventions of the Russian Federation.”
France, Sweden and Luxembourg also sent complaints about “harmful interference” in their satellite networks, the ITU confirmed, without saying who was responsible. Russia’s digital ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Western officials accused Russia of a massive cyberattack on a satellite internet network in Ukraine, at the start of a large-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022. More recently, airlines have complained for months about an increase in GPS interference affecting navigation, and Estonia admitted blamed Russia for tampering with navigation equipment in the airspace above the Baltic states.
The ITU, made up of 193 member states, is responsible for regulating and coordinating the global satellite system and is meeting this month. The Constitution directs her to coordinate efforts to eliminate harmful interference.
It is not clear exactly how the body could respond to the complaints during the June 24 to 28 meeting.
An ITU spokesman said he could not “prejudge” the outcome of the meeting, adding that the “objective is to resolve the issue of enabling the operation of radio communications services free from harmful interference… .”
A starting point could be to draw up a report on the extent of the interference, as the ITU has already done on the war damage to the Ukrainian telecommunications sector.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; additional reporting by James Pearson and Alexander Marrow in London; Editing by Alex Richardson)