Russian military satellite once approached ICEYE-X36; US halts Ukrainian use of commercial imagery portal and restricts Starshield

Al Jazeera reported that after several months of maneuvering, the Russian military satellite “Cosmos 2612” reduced its distance from ICEYE-X36 from more than 320 kilometers to about 4.8 kilometers before switching positions in front of and behind the commercial radar satellite. Space-tracking company LeoLabs estimated that the two came within roughly 500 meters of each other over the weekend, but explicitly said the estimate was uncertain; other reports put their closest distance at less than 30 meters. By the time Al Jazeera published its report, Cosmos 2612 had begun moving away.

ICEYE-X36 is owned by the US subsidiary of the Finnish company ICEYE and is registered in the United States. Al Jazeera cited Defense News as saying that ICEYE has provided radar imagery to Ukraine since 2022. Al Jazeera reported that a Ukrainian official said the Ukrainian military uses ICEYE’s capabilities, but could not confirm whether ICEYE-X36 itself supported Ukraine. The available material therefore does not allow the satellite to be directly equated with Ukraine’s use of ICEYE’s capabilities.

Russia’s intent has not been confirmed. Marco Langbroek of Delft University of Technology outlined several possibilities: this may have been a rehearsal for a future attack, a provocation or an act of intimidation, or a test of how satellite operators would react; there is currently no evidence confirming any of them. Al Jazeera cited Reuters as reporting that ICEYE CEO Rafal Modrzewski said that after the company maneuvered its own satellite at the time, the Russian side appeared to continue adjusting, but there is no evidence of a causal relationship between the two actions.

Researchers assess that directly destroying the satellite using kinetic means currently appears unlikely: any potential response could be difficult to predict, and debris from a collision would affect all users of space. The material cited by Al Jazeera does not indicate that a collision, interference or data interception has occurred, but such a close approach would increase those risks. One analyst said this was a close approach conducted without the consent of the commercial satellite’s owner; regardless of Russia’s intent, it had directly exposed a company-operated asset to wartime risks.

Russia has previously made multiple close approaches to other countries’ space assets. In 2020, two Russian satellites approached the US military satellite USA 245; in September 2025, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said two Russian Luch-Olymp satellites tracked two Intelsat satellites used by the German military. In October 2022, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official said at the United Nations that dual-use infrastructure could be a legitimate target for retaliatory strikes. These incidents do not prove that Russia intended to cause damage in the present case, but they highlight the shrinking buffer between commercial and military space assets: Russia’s previous close approaches mainly targeted military satellites, whereas this one occurred near a commercial remote-sensing asset associated with capabilities used by the Ukrainian military.

At the same time, Ukraine’s access to alternative space-intelligence channels has been constrained by a US administrative decision. According to Reuters, as cited by Al Jazeera, in March 2025, while Washington was suspending intelligence sharing with Ukraine, the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency temporarily suspended Ukraine’s access to the main portal for commercial imagery purchased by the US government. In the week before Al Jazeera published its report, two US officials and one Western official said the order restricting Ukraine’s use of Starshield came from within the White House. Starshield is the military-grade version of SpaceX’s Starlink. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the service currently cannot be made available to Ukraine, while Kyiv’s request to use it for strikes on targets deep inside Russia remains under discussion.

Suspending one access point does not mean Ukraine has immediately lost all space imagery. The ICEYE constellation contains more than one satellite, and Germany’s sovereign radar satellite can also provide data. The real bottleneck is speed: space-safety researcher Juliana Suess said that, according to ICEYE, expanding access brought faster data-retrieval capabilities; however, after switching to a commercial or sovereign supplier, it remains uncertain whether data can be transmitted at the same speed. For battlefield units, “having data” and “being able to obtain the data within the operational window” are two different things.

The two forms of pressure should not be conflated. Whether Russia’s close approach constituted preparation for an attack remains unresolved; the US restrictions on data access, by contrast, represent a policy choice by a government that directly controls the authorization mechanism. Existing reporting does not explain the White House’s reasons for restricting Starshield, nor does it prove that suspending the imagery portal and suspending intelligence sharing were part of the same policy. What is clear is that in the era of commercial remote sensing, “supporting Ukraine” is no longer merely a moral label; it is jointly determined by data-refresh speed, interface availability, access permissions and authorization for military use. Whether Kyiv can use Starshield against targets deep inside Russia particularly clearly demonstrates that when commercial communications capabilities can be converted into long-range strike capabilities is determined by state policy, not merely by commercial contracts.

Regardless of whether Cosmos 2612 was intended as a rehearsal, an act of intimidation or a test of reactions, satellite operators must confront the risks of collision and interference; Ukraine, meanwhile, must confront the question of whether the next batch of radar imagery will arrive in time and whether military communications services will be approved for deep strikes. Orbits, imagery contracts and administrative authorizations have, alongside drones and missiles, already become part of the front line of this war.