The Russian military satellite Kosmos-2612 has come within 26 metres of ICEYE-X36, a commercial radar satellite made by the Finnish company ICEYE and originally registered in the United States. According to the monitoring service Orbital Radar, the two craft are 26 metres apart, while any approach under one kilometre counts as critical. Their speed relative to each other was reported as zero. The radar can image the ground at night and through thick cloud, which makes it useful for tracking troop movements and military vehicles. Ukraine uses the satellite's data, and the company has also supplied satellite data to US government clients.
Marco Langbroek, a satellite expert at TU Delft, has followed the movements and says the approach has been building for weeks. According to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), published on 15 October, Kosmos-2612 carried out a series of manoeuvres at the end of September to join the orbital plane of ICEYE-X36. On 12 October, the Russian satellite reportedly made a speed correction of about 27.9 metres per second, settling into an orbit near 555 kilometres of altitude. Langbroek put the gap at one to two kilometres on Saturday, 17 October, and at a few hundred metres on Sunday, 18 October, adding that he cannot measure it more precisely. Kosmos-2612 was launched in April 2026 alongside five other Russian satellites.
In a blog post, Langbroek warned that the situation is worrying.
“There is a disturbing cat-and-mouse game going on in space.”
Russia has flown toward other satellites before, but earlier approaches involved communications satellites, which may have been monitored for eavesdropping.
Ukraine's military intelligence credits the satellite's images and information with enabling the destruction of more than 7,000 Russian vehicles at the front. Iceye, founded in Finland in 2014, counts the defence companies Rheinmetall and Saab among its customers, and it signed agreements to supply satellite data after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Trishkin says it is not known whether Kyiv receives intelligence specifically from ICEYE-X36. Russia has warned that every satellite useful to Ukraine in the war is a legitimate target, according to reports.
Experts consulted by Golem list several scenarios: Kosmos-2612 could follow ICEYE-X36 to jam its signals and take it out of service, or try to damage it with lasers. A third possibility is simple surveillance. Blick notes that no enemy satellite has ever been shot down during a war, although Russia, China and the United States have destroyed satellites in military tests. Trishkin suggests Moscow could aim to force ICEYE's operators to correct the orbit often, burning fuel and shortening the satellite's working life. Langbroek describes the best case as provocation and the worst as an attempt to disable the satellite.
“Now it really looks more like preparation for actually switching off an enemy satellite.”
Langbroek also asks whether this could be the first real anti-satellite attack, and warns that if ICEYE-X36 suddenly failed, it would be hard to blame Kosmos-2612 unambiguously. Other trackers also believe the manoeuvre was deliberate. Iceye had not yet responded to the reports at the time of publication, and Langbroek expects the coming hours and days to show what Russia intends.
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Orbital tracking data put the Russian military satellite Kosmos-2612 within 26 metres of ICEYE-X36, a Finnish-built radar satellite that supplies Ukraine. Experts list jamming, laser damage or simple surveillance as possible aims.
AI text based on reports by La Libre.be, Blick.ch, Deutsche Welle and other publishers. Published .