Russia Approaches US Radar Satellite Near Ukraine

Russia is stalking Ukraine's space assets. Analysts say this move signals a warning to Kyiv's allies. A Russian craft approached a commercial radar satellite from US registration. The War Zone reported the close pass using fresh tracking data. Cosmos 2612 may have slipped past ICEYE-X36. That asset belongs to the US arm of Finland's ICEYE firm. LeoLabs, a space-tracking company in America, put the closest approach at roughly 500 metres. Breaking Defence carried that figure too. ICEYE has delivered radar imagery to Ukraine since early 2022. Defence News confirmed this supply line.

Is Russia targeting satellites that aid Ukraine? Al Jazeera asked experts for answers. A Russian satellite deliberately positioned itself near a Western one. Months of careful manoeuvring led up to the event. Cosmos 2612 is part of six military satellites Russia launched in April. Four moved close to an ICEYE unit back in May. ICEYE-X36 is commercial property, not government-owned. Yet ICEYE sells radar pictures to militaries and feeds data to the US and partners. Rafal Modrzewski, chief executive at ICEYE, told Reuters the firm shifted its own satellite after seeing Russian activity. That shift apparently sparked further Russian moves. Between Thursday and Friday last week, LeoLabs noted a dramatic change. Cosmos 2612 closed in from over 320km to about 4.8km away. Over the weekend it drifted ahead of and behind the ICEYE platform. At times it came within roughly 500 metres. A report on Monday added that estimates remained uncertain. By Monday, the Russian craft had begun drifting away again.

A Ukrainian official spoke to Axios about the situation. The military works with ICEYE and uses its capabilities. Yet officials said it was unclear whether ICEYE-X36 specifically supports Ukraine directly. Mark Hilborne, a senior lecturer at King's College London, offered historical context. In the past Russia mainly targeted Western military satellites instead of commercial ones. Two Russian craft approached USA 245 in early 2020. That was a US spy satellite. Boris Pistorius, German Defence Minister, made another claim in September 2025. He said two Russian Luch-Olymp units tracked Intelsat satellites serving the German military. Dr Marco Langbroek from TU Delft Faculty of Aerospace Engineering explained the intent behind these actions. At geostationary altitude he has seen repeated approaches by Russian LUCH/OLYMP-K 1 & 2 to western communications satellites. Distances fell to a few tens of kilometres in recent years. Likely goal? To eavesdrop on data transfers and communications streams.

Russian satellites have tested dangerous proximity in Low Earth Orbit before. They recently practiced maneuvers similar to the one targeting ICEYE-X36 using their own craft as dummy targets.

This specific incident changes everything because no owner or operator consented to it. Approaching a satellite that close without permission is widely condemned as reckless. It creates a real risk of collision or severe signal interference.

Experts compare this danger to placing your car on a highway just ten centimeters from another moving vehicle. That scenario is highly unsafe and invites disaster.

Langbroek admits the exact purpose remains unknown. It could be a rehearsal for an actual future attack. It might simply be provocation designed to ruffle the feathers of Ukraine and its allies. Or perhaps it was a test to see how operators react to such threats.

This behavior fits the pattern of hybrid warfare perfectly. We see similar provocations when Russia flies drones into Polish airspace or zooms NATO warships at low elevation in the Baltic Sea. These actions are designed to incite reactions.

How often do these events happen? Close approaches have occurred for years, but never like this before. Hilborne calls this the first time a country has approached a commercial satellite without any consent. Some reports put the distance at less than thirty meters. That is incredibly close.

More common interference does not require getting near a satellite at all. Jamming drowns out signals from the ground instead. Western military officials told Reuters that Russian interference with Western space systems has increased significantly since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Why does this matter? For Hilborne, the choice of target indicates Russia no longer distinguishes between commercial and military satellites as potential targets. This is a huge problem because militaries, including Ukraine's, increasingly rely on commercial providers for communications and imagery.

Moscow has warned about this reality. A senior Russian foreign ministry official told the United Nations in October 2022 that quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike.

Juliana Suess from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs suggests Russia calculates that reactions will be less severe if they shadow a commercial satellite rather than a sovereign one. They might think especially so if the target does not belong to the US.

Ownership is not that simple though. ICEYE-X36 is owned by an ICEYE US subsidiary and registered as a US satellite, Hilborne noted. This creates a complex problem. The distance matters too.

A gap under 5km might sound vast on Earth, yet Suess called it a mere hop and skip in space. She warned this proximity allows Russia to conduct nefarious acts, such as intercepting data or jamming signals to disrupt service temporarily. A kinetic strike remains possible but seems unlikely now since crashing a satellite is an unprecedented move against orbiting hardware.

Is Moscow just sending a message or escalating the situation? Probably both. Hilborne noted that platforms are clearly held under threat while this action represents a dangerous escalation. Russia might be willing to attack any satellite because destroying one simply by crashing it into another creates a weapon. Suess emphasized that intimidation as a political goal should never be underestimated regardless of future maneuvers. The move signals that space assets cannot be considered safe or removed from the war in Ukraine.

Moscow labels these spacecraft inspector satellites and claimed such maneuvers are common practice by many countries back in 2020, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Hilborne described the approach as activity sitting below the threshold of conflict for now. An outright attack on ICEYE-X36 looks unlikely given the current balance in the conflict and the fact it is an American-registered satellite. Any response would be unpredictable if Russia actually launched such a strike. Furthermore, creating massive space debris would become a problem for everyone involved. It remains hard to second-guess where Russia draws the line on these matters.

Ukraine has faced pressure before regarding its access to satellites, sometimes even from allies themselves. In March 2025, Washington paused intelligence sharing with Kyiv leading the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to temporarily suspend Ukraine's access to the main portal for commercial imagery bought by the government. If ICEYE-X36 were disrupted, Ukraine would not necessarily go blind because the constellation holds more than one satellite and sovereign radar satellites like Germany's could provide data instead. But speed is the real issue here since expanded access agreed this year meant faster transfers according to Suess. The question becomes whether a similarly fast transfer of data can be enabled with a new provider, whether commercial or sovereign in nature.

Now Ukraine faces another squeeze as orders limit Starshield, the military-grade version of SpaceX's Starlink service. Last week directives came from inside the White House based on accounts from two US officials and a Western official told Reuters. On Saturday US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated Starshield is currently unavailable to Ukraine though Kyiv's request to use it for attacks deep inside Russia remains under discussion.