Russian military satellite comes dangerously close to a radar satellite operated by a Finnish-U.S. company that supplies satellite imagery to Ukraine
The Russian military satellite Cosmos 2612 has come very close to ICEYE-X36, a radar satellite operated by the Finnish-American company ICEYE, according to LeoLabs, which monitors activity in space.
In an October 16 statement, LeoLabs said the Russian satellite’s movement “appears to be a deliberate approach toward” ICEYE-X36. As of Friday afternoon, Cosmos 2612 was about 4.8 kilometers from ICEYE-X36, down from more than 320 kilometers a day earlier. Dutch satellite tracker Marco Langbroek estimated the distance between the satellites at 1 to 2 kilometers.
“That is very worrisome. This RPO (Rendezvous and Proximity Operation) is completely non-consensual.
“If ICEYE-X36 is indeed used by Ukraine, this means that a satellite from one country (Russia) is closely approaching a satellite of another country (Ukraine) with which it is at war,” Langbroek wrote.
By Monday, October 19, the distance between the spacecraft had shrunk to 26 meters, according to rocket launch analyst Georgy Trishkin, who runs the Telegram channel Tekhassky Vestnik. He said any approach that brings spacecraft within a kilometer of each other in orbit “is considered critical.” “And here they’re also flying in tandem without coordinating with each other. In this case, the maneuvers aren’t accidental — they’re very much deliberate,” Trishkin said:
The know-it-alls are all rattling off the same lines about “intelligence gathering” and “jammers” — typical output from an AI chatbot. But the actual purpose of these maneuvers is less obvious. What we’re seeing is one of the first demonstrations of a new kind of confrontation in orbit — noncontact deorbiting through fuel depletion.
Trishkin added: “Directly interfering with other spacecraft is dangerous — whether through kinetic or electromagnetic means, it’s an outright act of aggression.”
The U.S. Defense Department and ICEYE representatives declined to comment. An unnamed Ukrainian official told Axios that Ukraine’s military works with the Finnish company and “uses its capabilities,” but could not say whether ICEYE-X36 was involved.
In 2024, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate said it had been using an ICEYE satellite for almost two years to identify “hostile targets” and “defend the country” and had taken more than 4,000 images of “enemy facilities” during that time. ICEYE and Ukraine’s Defense Ministry signed a new cooperation agreement in January 2026, giving Ukraine’s military expanded access to high-quality radar satellite imagery.
Russian satellites have made dangerous maneuvers before. In the summer of 2026, four Russian military satellites — Cosmos 2610, Cosmos 2611, Cosmos 2612, and Cosmos 2613 — changed their orbits and approached the ICEYE-X36 radar satellite.
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