A newly released commercial image shows a Russian military satellite, Cosmos 2612, hanging just over a kilometer from ICEYE-X36, a U.S.-flagged radar satellite whose Finnish parent company has supported Ukraine’s military since 2022. The photo, published Oct. 22 as an Axios exclusive, was taken Oct. 17 by the spatial intelligence firm Vantor. Its readout estimates the gap at 1.02 kilometers, with both spacecraft moving at roughly 17,000 mph.
The image landed a day after the State Department publicly called out Moscow. Thomas G. DiNanno, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, wrote on X that “Russia’s COSMOS 2612 military satellite has been exhibiting threatening behavior,” describing “behaviors consistent with on-orbit weapons operations.” He said the matter had just been raised at the U.N. General Assembly’s First Committee, which handles disarmament.
LeoLabs, the commercial tracking company that has followed the approach most closely, calls it the most advanced uncooperative rendezvous it has observed. Outside analysts say they cannot recall an uncoordinated approach this close to another satellite.
How close did Cosmos 2612 get to ICEYE-X36?
It depends on who is measuring. Figures range from three miles to a few dozen feet.
LeoLabs, a commercial company that tracks objects in low Earth orbit, has provided the most cited figures. On Thursday, Oct. 15, the two satellites were more than 200 miles apart. A day later, by Friday afternoon, Cosmos 2612 was about three miles from ICEYE-X36, LeoLabs told Axios. LeoLabs later put the nearest approach at about 500 meters, roughly a third of a mile, Breaking Defense reported. LeoLabs said Cosmos 2612 “conducted a deliberate series of maneuvers toward ICEYE-X36” between Oct. 15 and Oct. 19.
Vantor’s Oct. 17 image, at about 1 kilometer, captured one moment in a weekend of repositioning, not the closest pass.
Smaller numbers have circulated too. Some reports put the gap at less than 30 meters, or under 100 feet, Al Jazeera noted, while LeoLabs called its own 500-meter estimate uncertain. LeoLabs has not confirmed the smaller figures, and no U.S. government agency has released a distance.
By Monday, Oct. 19, the Russian satellite had begun to move away, Al Jazeera reported.
What is rendezvous and proximity operations, and why does it worry the Pentagon?
Rendezvous and proximity operations, known as RPO, simply means flying one spacecraft up to another and staying nearby. It’s routine when both sides agree. Cargo ships reach the International Space Station this way.
Doing it without the other operator’s consent is a different thing. A chaser first has to match the target’s orbital plane, the tilted ring it travels in around the Earth. Then it fine-tunes its altitude and speed so it gradually catches up, since a lower, faster orbit gains ground and a higher one falls behind. The last step is the hardest: small, repeated engine burns to hold position near an object moving at about 17,000 mph.
LeoLabs said Cosmos 2612 did all of that. Its analysis, as described by Breaking Defense, listed a controlled departure, plane matching, a long-range closing approach, adjustments to speed and altitude, repositioning ahead of and behind the target, and staying close instead of flying past. The company said those skills could be used to inspect, characterize, shadow or interfere with another spacecraft.
“This is the most advanced and potentially dangerous uncooperative RPO we’ve observed,” Adam Marsh, LeoLabs’ vice president for technical solutions, told Breaking Defense.
The skills that allow close-up pictures could also allow jamming, damage or a collision. Aaron Brynildson, a space law professor at the University of Mississippi, told Axios there is no strict legal limit on how close satellites can get, but countries generally keep at least six miles apart. If both spacecraft maneuvered at the same moment at close range, he said, “the likelihood they could crash into each other increases significantly.”
Who owns ICEYE-X36, and is it working for Ukraine?
ICEYE is headquartered in Finland. ICEYE-X36, a synthetic aperture radar satellite that can image the ground through clouds and at night, is operated by its American arm, ICEYE US, and was launched from the United States in 2024, according to Breaking Defense. That makes it a U.S. satellite since the United States is the launching state, Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation, told the outlet.
The Ukraine link is the part nobody has confirmed. ICEYE agreed in 2022 to give Ukraine radar imagery through a dedicated satellite but has never said which one. In January, the company said it had signed an agreement with “a customer within the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine” to expand cooperation. A Ukrainian official told Axios that the military uses ICEYE’s capabilities but did not say whether X36 is part of that work. The official said the military had not known about the latest movements but had been told of similar Russian maneuvers in the spring and summer.
ICEYE said in an emailed statement to Axios that it is tracking the situation and that its “constellation architecture is designed for continuity and resilience.” CEO Rafal Modrzewski told Reuters the company moved its satellite, which appeared to trigger more Russian maneuvers, Al Jazeera reported.
ICEYE’s work with Kyiv is still growing. On Oct. 22, the same day the Vantor image was published, ICEYE and Nokia signed a letter of intent with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry to explore sovereign satellite communications.
Where Cosmos 2612 came from
Cosmos 2612 is one of six satellites the Russian military launched in April, Al Jazeera reported, citing The War Zone. In May, a few Russian satellites began maneuvering around ICEYE-X36, according to commercial tracking data cited by Axios. The U.S. Space Force said the Cosmos satellites were positioned near a “Western commercial radar satellite used by Ukraine for imagery intelligence,” without naming it.
Earlier Russian approaches mostly involved U.S. government spy satellites. “What is new is that I don’t think that there has ever been an uncoordinated RPO that was close,” Samson told Breaking Defense. In earlier cases the target was a U.S. government satellite, she said, “and obviously in this case, it was a commercial satellite.”
Russia’s record of satellite approaches
| When | Russian satellite | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Cosmos 2519, 2521, 2523 | An inspector satellite released a subsatellite, which then fired off another object at about 250 kph. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ford said in 2020 that it showed the ability to “fire a projectile.” | Defense News |
| Late 2019 to early 2020 | Cosmos 2542, 2543 | Shadowed a U.S. spy satellite that TIME identified as a KH-11, at times coming within 100 miles. Gen. John Raymond called it “unusual and disturbing behavior.” | CBS News |
| July 15, 2020 | Cosmos 2543 | Released an object in what U.S. Space Command called a space-based anti-satellite weapons test. | U.S. Space Command |
| May 2024 | Cosmos 2576 | Launched into the same orbit as USA 314, a U.S. reconnaissance satellite. U.S. officials assessed it as likely a counterspace weapon. | Al Jazeera |
| May 2025 | Cosmos 2588 | Placed in an orbit near a U.S. government satellite, which experts identified as USA 338. Breaking Defense reported it would pass as close as 93.9 km. | Breaking Defense |
| September 2025 | Two Luch-Olymp satellites | Germany’s defense minister said they were tracking two Intelsat satellites used by the German military. | AP via PBS |
| October 2026 | Cosmos 2612 | Closed to about 500 meters of ICEYE-X36, per LeoLabs. | Breaking Defense |
What U.S. officials have said
Beyond DiNanno’s post, Washington has said little. The Defense Department declined to give Axios details on the Russian maneuvers. Samson told Breaking Defense the quiet made her “wonder why the USG has been silent on this matter.”
The Space Force’s space threat fact sheet, current as of December 2025, says Russia has treated European satellites aiding Ukraine’s military as “legitimate targets.” And on Sept. 14, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the service has on-orbit space control weapons able to defend against “hostile adversary action,” Defense News reported. He declined to say what kind of weapons they are or how many are in orbit.
What the ICEYE approach means for space weapons
Analysts are split on how alarmed to be, but they agree the line between watching and threatening is blurry. “There is no real understanding of what is hostile, what is escalatory,” Clayton Swope, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Axios. In a CSIS post cited by Breaking Defense, he wrote that given Russia’s history of testing on-orbit weapons, “policymakers should assume Cosmos 2612 could take an action” that threatens the commercial satellite.
The case also tests who answers for a commercial satellite owned by a Finnish company, run by its U.S. subsidiary and possibly feeding imagery to a country at war. A senior Russian Foreign Ministry official told the United Nations in October 2022 that “quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike,” Al Jazeera noted.
Vantor CEO Dan Smoot told Axios that watching one spacecraft repeatedly maneuver near another “raises serious concerns about capability and intent.” LeoLabs spokesperson Victoria Heath put the case for constant watching more plainly: “Knowing where objects are and what they’re doing is essential for any operator.”
Official links
- U.S. Space Command
- U.S. Space Force: Space Threat Fact Sheet
- U.S. Space Command: Russia conducts space-based anti-satellite weapons test (2020)
- ICEYE press releases
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
