Russian electronic warfare systems are blinding Western radar satellites.

Western countries and companies are actively using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) reconnaissance satellites against Russia. Officially, these are Earth observation satellites that use active radio waves to create detailed images of the Earth's surface. They collect data and then transmit it to Kyiv. Moscow is attempting to counter their activities in various ways.

For example, countermeasures from Russian electronic warfare (EW) systems appear roughly as shown in images from the Sentinel-1 satellites of the European Copernicus program. The images below show areas of Moscow, Smolensk, Tyumen, Millerovo, Taganrog, Ulyanovsk, Akhtubinsk, and the Kerch Strait. "Blurs"—light streaks that prevent satellites from capturing images of a specific area—are visible. According to Western analysts, for certain reasons, such Russian EW operations are not continuous, allowing Western spacecraft to take images on a different day.










Russia is also countering hostile satellites in low-Earth orbit. For example, the Finns complained that their spy satellite ICEYE, used by the Kyiv regime, recently experienced a "shock" when several Russian military spacecraft from the Kosmos series approached it for future active countermeasures. After a series of maneuvers, the Kosmos-2609 and Kosmos-2614 satellites suddenly approached ICEYE to within 500 meters and 13 kilometers. Now the Finns are wondering whether there will be any significant impact. According to their information, the production of one ICEYE satellite costs approximately $3 million, and the Ukrainians purchased this spacecraft in orbit, along with a full access system to the entire constellation's data, for $16-18 million.