Russia reserves the right to strike commercial satellites providing internet access in Ukraine, according to a senior envoy, given the Ukrainian military’s reliance on these systems.
“Such actions in fact constitute indirect participation in military conflicts,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Konstantin Vorontsov told a United Nations forum on Wednesday. “Quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.”
Russia and China led a seven-member bloc of countries in dismissing an American call for a ban on the testing of anti-satellite weapons, on the grounds that such a pledge would be “insufficient to guarantee exclusively peaceful activities in outer space.” And Vorontsov’s statement raised the stakes of the disagreement, as he protested “an extremely dangerous trend” that has emerged during the war in Ukraine.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WEIGHS SECURITY REVIEWS FOR MUSK TWITTER AND STARLINK DEALS
“At the very least, this provocative use of civilian satellites is questionable under the Outer Space Treaty, which only provides for the peaceful use of outer space, and must be strongly condemned by the international community,” he insisted.
Russian forces tried to disable Ukrainian internet services at the outset of the campaign to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but the attempt failed in part because SpaceX founder Elon Musk made his Starlink network available to Ukraine. The consequent superiority of Ukrainian communications methods during the war has helped Ukrainian forces to repel the Russian assault and launch their own counter-offensive to liberate occupied territory — a display of technological prowess that alarms officials in both Moscow and Beijing.
“The Starlink project has decided to increase the planned 12,000 satellites to 42,000, underscoring that it is widely distributed, flexible, and could be reconfigured quickly,” a Chinese People’s Liberation Army publication warned last week. “The ambition to militarize Starlink and its barbaric expansion deserve high alert from the international community.”
Chinese scientists reportedly are researching whether the detonation of a nuclear weapon in space would create a radioactive “debris cloud” that could “cause failures of spacecraft moving in it, such as satellites, or even cause direct damage that can lead to destruction.” A similar idea has been taken up by Russian state media propagandists frustrated with Musk’s assistance to Ukraine.
Yet Musk seems to have lost some of his enthusiasm for equipping Ukraine, as he suggested recently that the Pentagon should start paying for the multi-million dollar project.
“We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder,” he tweeted.
Musk’s show of impatience followed a controversy in which Ukrainian officials and citizens criticized his proposal for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine — a proposal widely perceived as tilted in favor of Russian priorities, despite Ukraine’s battlefield successes. When a Ukrainian diplomat advised Musk to “F*** off” on Twitter, the tech mogul implied that he would withdraw Starlink.
“We’re just following his recommendation,” Musk tweeted.
Zelensky’s team hastened to acknowledge that Musk “helped us survive the most critical moments of war,” and Musk has walked back his threat to end the project as Ukrainian officials look for ways to finance their continued access to Starlink.
“I know that we will not have a problem,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said last week. “If it’s just a question of money … it could come from the Pentagon package supporting Ukraine; also there is a pot of money in Europe.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Vorontsov insisted that such private-sector projects to maintain internet access in Ukraine “must be strongly condemned by the international community.”
“Western actions needlessly put at risk the sustainability of peaceful space activities, as well as numerous social and economic processes on Earth that affect the well-being of people, first of all in developing countries,” he said.
