Chinese military satellites are passing over Ukraine to give Moscow pin-point targeting data for its strikes against targets, Kyiv claims as it states Beijing’s involvement in the war is greater than publicly acknowledged.
There is “evidence” of China assisting Russia’s over-three-year war against Ukraine, the country has claimed. Ukrainian intelligence says Chinese spy satellites are identifying targets and that this intelligence is being passed to Moscow, the latest accusations in growing narratives surrounding the war in space, and around China’s clandestine involvement in the conflict.
Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Service officer Oleh Alexandrov said of this process, reports The Times: “There is evidence of a high level of co-operation between Russia and China in conducting satellite reconnaissance of the territory of Ukraine in order to identify and further explore strategic objects for targeting”.
Underlining that this is something foreign countries should care about, Alexandrov added that recent strikes that hit factories owned by “foreign investors” including the United States “may” be linked to Chinese targeting.
Per Ukrainian state media, “at least three” Chinese satellites passed over areas in Ukraine that were later subjected to missile and drone attacks over the weekend.
Both Russia and China have denied the claim. Moscow, for its part, through President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed it on the grounds that the Russian military doesn’t need to go begging to Beijing because “we have our own capabilities, including space capabilities, to carry out all the tasks”.
China, which has long denied having a hand in the Ukraine War, thought pushing back against these claims was important enough to break a nationwide week-long holiday to issue a semi-rebuttal to Ukrainian state media. Beijing said they were “not aware” of any such situation and insisted China’s position on the Ukraine war is to be “open, honest, objective and impartial”.
Nevertheless, a growing drumbeat of accusations against Chinese involvement continues to grow. In particular are Ukrainian claims that the Russian-built drones that hammer the country nightly include large quantities of Chinese components.
Over the course of this year, claims have included a Chinese drone manufacturer having staff deployed to Russia for technical development, that Chinese firms supply Russia with millions of dollars worth of drone components, that drone engines are covertly shipped to Russia under misleading consignment descriptions by front companies.
The claims of Chinese spy satellites being deployed against Ukraine comes amidst weeks of claims over adversarial conditions in space. Last month, the German defence minister Boris Pistorius claimed Russian satellites are “chasing” German ones through space. He said there was a “real threat” scenario in play.
The defence minister told a Berlin conference: “Russia and China have expanded their capabilities for warfare in space rapidly over the past years. They can disrupt satellite operations, blind satellites, manipulate or kinetically destroy them.”
Last week, the United Kingdom, also a NATO member, added its own accusations to Germany’s. The head of UK Space Command, senior British Army officer and aviator Major General Paul Tedman said Russia was persistently trying to jam UK satellites from the ground and was performing close interceptions with its own in space.
He said, reports the BBC: “They’re interested in what we’re doing and flying relatively close… They’ve got payloads on board that can see our satellites and are trying to collect information from them.”
Despite British satellites being hardened against jamming with countermeasures, he said: “We’re seeing our satellites being jammed by the Russians on a reasonably persistent basis” and noted both Russia and China had tested anti-satellite weapons. He said the Chinese were more advanced in this field.
War in space is not a theoretical problem. As reported in 2023, the first battle in space had been fought and won by Israel, when it launched a missile to shoot down another missile in outer space. Its target, which had been launched by the Iran-backed Houthis, was destroyed above the 100km (62 mile) Karman Line, which denotes the boundary of outer space.
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