Ukraine’s Lima System: GPS Spoofing That Redirects Russian Missiles and Kyiv Residents to Peru

How a Ukrainian electronic-warfare network uses deliberate satellite- deception to protect cities, at the cost of everyday civilian

In the autumn of 2026, residents of Kyiv began to notice a peculiar and persistent anomaly. Smartphones, vehicle systems, fitness watches and ride-hailing applications repeatedly placed their users in Lima, the capital of Peru — more than 12,000 kilometres away.

Taxi routes calculated journeys across the Atlantic; Garmin devices logged short runs as if they had taken place on the Pacific coast; dating applications suggested nearby matches who appeared to be in South America.

The phenomenon, which Ukrainians soon termed “getting Lima’d”, is not a software glitch or a random jamming failure. It is the intentional and signature effect of a domestically developed electronic-warfare system known as Lima (and its later variant, Lima Quant).

Developed by the Ukrainian company Cascade Systems in cooperation with the Night Watch territorial-defence electronic-warfare unit, Lima employs active GPS and GLONASS…