Russian threat to strike satellites tests laws of war in space
- Russia warned it could attack US commercial satellites if they continue to be used to share information with Kyiv
- Last November, Russia shot down one of its own discarded satellites with an anti-satellite missile
“Quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike,” senior foreign ministry official Konstantin Vorontsov told the United Nations, reiterating Moscow’s position that Western civilian and commercial satellites helping Ukrainian’s war effort was “an extremely dangerous trend”.
No country has carried out a missile strike against an enemy’s satellite. Such an act during the war in Ukraine could sharply escalate tensions between Russia and the United States.
“This threat has brought us to a brink that we’ve never been to before,” said Michelle Hanlon, co-director of the University of Mississippi School of Law’s Air and Space Law programme. “There’s always been a sense that this could happen, but never has somebody actually said that they might do that out loud.”
Ukraine’s military relies heavily on Elon Musk’s SpaceX for broadband internet beamed from its low-Earth orbiting Starlink satellite network. US firms like Maxar are capturing images of the war from satellites in orbit.
And tens of thousands of communications devices in Ukraine rely on US satellite communications giant Iridium’s satellite network.