Star Wars: Has Russia's war with Ukraine gone intergalactic?

Has space become a new frontier in Russia's war with Ukraine?

Russian military satellite Cosmos-2612 carried out a manoeuvre between October 15 and 18 that brought it “dangerously close” to Ukrainian commercial satellite, Iceye-X36. The move was described by US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security as "threatening".

Operated by Finnish company Iceye, Iceye-X36 is a Finnish-American civilian satellite equipped with Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) to provide satellite images to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 

The US State Department said Russia's tactic was consistent with “in-orbit military operations”.

Analysts specialising in space surveillance have been following Cosmos-2612 since its launch in April. 

"Cosmos-2612 was one of six satellites launched in total. It was immediately apparent that this wasn't a classic deployment. As soon as they took off, the satellites started changing orbit to pursue Iceye satellites,” said Norbert Pouzin, an orbital analyst at Aldoria, a French space surveillance firm.  

Cosmos-2612 took off on April 6, 2026 alongside Cosmos-2609, Cosmos-2610, Cosmos-2611, Cosmos-2613 and Cosmos-2614. KeepTrack, a site specialising in satellite navigation, enables viewers to track their paths.

Orbit re-routing – as has been the case of the Cosmos satellites – is a move that consumes a lot of fuel. It’s also the first step in approaching another satellite, Pouzin explains: 

"If two satellites are travelling in the same orbit, then they don’t need as much fuel to approach one another. Changing directions in space uses a lot of fuel. But once in the same orbit as another satellite, you’ve already executed the most costly move fuel-wise, if you then want to carry out an approach.”

From a kilometre to within just a few hundred metres 

As the imaging data via site, Satellite Tracker, corroborates, Cosmos-2612 diverted from its original position – around 400-500 km from Iceye-X36 – to get closer to the Finnish-American satellite. 

"On October 15, Cosmos-2612 was within 5 kilometres of Iceye-X36. Its position continued to narrow in on the satellite on October 16 and 17, before finally getting to within a few hundred metres and a kilometre of Iceye-X36 ,” Pouzin said.

Satellite imaging company Vantor published a photo of the two satellites on October 22, depicting their orbits withing just 1.02 kilometres of one another. 

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Data from KeepTrack also revealed that Cosmos-2612 and Iceye-X36 later embarked on the same orbit, meaning the Russian satellite was “following” the Finnish-American satellite.

A bold move

So why did Cosmos-2612 carry out this “threatening” manoeuvre?

Given the lack of debris, it doesn’t appear that Iceye-X36 was the target of a “kinetic” attack – that is, a physical strike involving a collision or the launch of a projectile. But according to Pouzin, the manoeuvre by Cosmos-2612 could be interpreted as a form of exerting pressure on Ukraine, as it is the direct recipient of the data gathered by the Iceye satellite: 

"SAR satellites have unique observation plans [Editor’s note: a schedule that coordinates how radar satellites can scan specific parts of the planet.] If an operator knows about these, then he could – for a short time – disrupt the satellite’s mission, potentially causing repercussions for ground-based or maritime operations, for example."

Cosmos-2612’s move seemed to shock Western commentators, he added:

"While Russia regularly launches military satellites in the same orbital planes as classified American military satellites; carrying out this particular kind of approach on a commercial satellite while in a low orbit is something new.  Furthermore it seemed to be non-cooperative in nature: we are dealing with two actors who are not on the same side and these are satellites not operated by the same entity."

The initiative also revealed something about Russia’s capabilities, Pouzin concluded: 

"The move demonstrated a certain agility by the Russian operator, a skilled knowledge of the space domain, and a very high level of mastery in this type of navigation.”