Since joining NATO, Sweden claims Russia has been borking Nordic satellites
If Putin likes jammin', we hope NATO likes jammin' too
Sweden says its satellites have been impacted by "harmful interference" from Russia ever since the Nordic nation joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) last March.
The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) first confronted Russia about the interference on March 21, according to Bloomberg, exactly two weeks after Sweden joined the North Atlantic alliance. On June 4 the Swedes reportedly escalated their complaints about the interference to the International Telecommunications Union in Switzerland.
It seems merely joining NATO has earned Sweden the ire of Russia – the jamming efforts focused on three Sirius satellites that service Scandinavia and some of Eastern Europe. These are nothing to do with SiriusXM in the US, but provide digital TV services across part of Europe.
A Kremlin representative, Dmitry Peskov, claimed he had no idea what the Swedes were on about.
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It's not just a problem impacting Sweden, according to the European Union. Earlier this month it observed that "several ITU member states have recently suffered harmful interferences affecting satellite signals." The EU has been warning about this sort of thing for two years now – but it seems the problem just keeps getting worse.
The EU statement doesn't go so far as to accuse Russia directly of being responsible for all the interference, but it did precede its concerns with statements on Russia's war against Ukraine, noting it was "illegal, unprovoked, and unjustified."
Satellites aren't the only thing Russia has been messing with in Europe. The Kremlin's Sandworm cyber-crew is thought to have committed attacks on water plants. Russia has also apparently increased its efforts to compromise the French government, while the country is in the middle of an intense election campaign for control over the National Assembly. ®