In early February, Russian commentator Vladimir Solovyov called for Russia to nuke the Starlink constellation after SpaceX blocked Starlink access to their troops. All Starlink users must now obtain licenses from the Ukrainian government to use terminals within the besieged territory, effectively blinding Russia's occupying forces.

The move, campaigned for by Ukraine for months, is a severe blow to Russia, which has been purchasing Starlink terminals on the black market and using them on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine to keep troops online and guide strike drones deeper into Ukraine’s land. The loss of Starlink has led to a dramatic lapse in Russia’s ability to conduct offensive operations and a sharp increase in personnel losses in combat, some due to friendly fire.

Speaking on his prime-time talk show on the Russia 1 TV station, Solovyov suggested that a single nuclear detonation at the right altitude would take down the entire Starlink constellation, cutting Ukrainians from the advantage Starlink offers them.

In 2024, US intelligence said that Russia seemed to be developing a space-borne nuclear bomb that could turn vast swaths of near-Earth space into a radioactive space junk cemetery. 

In December, intelligence services of an undisclosed NATO nation told Associated Press that Russia is working on a new type of orbiting anti-satellite weapon that would release a cloud of tiny particles to flood orbit with damaging space debris to destroy the Starlink constellation, of which there are nearly 10,000 satellites in operation.

The threats, while seen as an extreme move that Russia is unlikely to resort to unless cornered, raise questions about Western reliance on space technology and the ability to survive a possible conflict escalation. The developments also underscore that although Russia has been considered a waning space power for years, it still has enough military space muscle to flex.

“Russia has had problems in its civilian space program for years,” Victoria Samson, Chief Director for Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, told Supercluster. “It’s been an issue even before Ukraine. They have quality control issues, corruption issues, and they don’t really have much of a commercial space program. But the place where they still are a global power is military space.”

Samson is a co-author of the Secure World Foundation’s Global Counterspace Capabilities Report published in June 2025. In it, Samson and colleague Laetitia Cesari compared information on offensive counterspace systems that exist or are in development across the world’s space-faring nations.

The report reveals that Russia in fact, is not that far behind the heavily arming China in terms of the sophistication of its space-borne combat arsenal, and, in fact, might be in some areas ahead of the U.S. Russia is certainly in possession of military space technologies that neither of the European nations have, which provides some comfort regarding Russia’s readiness, or lack thereof, to destroy vast swaths of orbit in a single nuclear explosion.

Sampson describes the effects of an orbital nuclear detonation as a wide-ranging, indiscriminate destruction.

“The immediate effects would be that any satellite in line of sight would have its electronics fried because of the energy released by the nuclear electromagnetic pulse,” Samson said. “It’s going to take adversary satellites, but also allied satellites and your own satellites. If you have people in orbit, they’re most likely going to be killed.”

On top of that, Samson said, the radiation released by the explosion would accumulate in the van Allen belts, four distinct regions around Earth where the planet’s magnetic field lines trap cosmic particles. Satellites passing these regions, which stretch at altitudes from 600 to 60,000 kilometers, would quickly have their electronic components degraded unless substantially hardened.

“Much like people getting sick from being exposed to too much radiation, satellites, too, would stop working as they would repeatedly pass through those van Allen belts, picking up radiation,” said Samson.

Julianna Suess, a space security researcher at the Royal United Services Institute think tank (RUSI), wrote in a blog post published after Russia’s alleged plans to develop a space-based nuke had been revealed that “a nuclear explosion would have indiscriminate and long-term effects on the orbit in question” and “a blanket effect on the surrounding area, depending on the size of the warhead – including on Russia’s own systems.”

Both Suess and Sampson refer to the Starfish Prime test, conducted by the US government in 1962. The test saw a 1.45 megaton warhead detonate 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth — an altitude where the International Space Station orbits today.

“That explosion took out about one-third of the active satellites in orbit at that point,” Samson said. “Granted, that was five years post-Sputnik, so there weren’t as many of them as there are today, but still, the effects of that explosion were far-reaching.”

Samson thinks that Russia is unlikely to press the space nuke button unless in a “Hitler in a bunker” situation.

“If Putin sees there is a regime change happening, that he is about to get out, he might choose to take everyone with him,” she said. “Detonating a nuclear bomb in space would be escalatory; it would certainly lead to a conflict on Earth, and it’s not something that they would take lightly.”

The zone weapon, described in the Associated Press report, would have similarly widespread effects on the orbital environment, said Samson, meaning Russia is equally unlikely to take such an action either.

“Once these pellets are out, they’re going to be following the laws of thermodynamics and orbital mechanics,” said Samson. “They are going to threaten Starlink satellites, but they’re also going to threaten all other satellites that are in the same orbits.”

These damaging space debris particles would gradually get pulled back toward Earth through the self-cleaning power of atmospheric drag. But that process might take years, resulting in a period when no one would be able to safely use the affected area of space.

Russia has other space warfighting cards up its sleeve. The Secure World Foundation’s report suggests that Russia has more advanced direct ascent anti-satellite missiles than the U.S. and also possesses sophisticated low-Earth-orbit co-orbital systems that might be exceeding the capabilities of all the Western allies. European nations, on the other hand, come out of the comparison rather poorly, with only France currently possessing any substantial counter-space assets. 

Co-orbital military space systems are satellites designed to orbit in the vicinity of adversary spacecraft with the goal of either destroying them or interfering with the data links between these satellites and ground control. According to the Secure World Foundation’s report, Russia has been investing in the development of offensive counter-space weapons since around 2010 and has conducted extensive orbital tests of systems designed for close maneuvers around adversary spacecraft (Rendezvous and Proximity Operations). 

A duo of satellites known as Luch 1 and Luch 2 (Russian for ray) has been making headlines since the mid 2010s for their suspicious maneuvers in the geostationary orbit, the orbital region at an altitude of 22,000, where many strategic spy and communication satellites are stationed.

“Russia has had satellites doing these uncoordinated close approaches both in low Earth orbit and the geostationary orbit for years now, since before the war in Ukraine,” said Samson. “These satellites are going to get up to orbit and get up close, and we don’t know necessarily what they’re going to be doing.”

European authorities believe the Luch duo may have been intercepting communications transmitted by European commercial and state-owned communication satellites. These satellites might also be able to disrupt satellite signals using onboard jammers that override the original signal.

None of that, however, works against the SpaceX-owned Starlink constellation, which has been aiding Ukrainians in their struggle since the early days of the war, which began four years ago today.

Ukrainian satcom expert Volodymyr Stepanets told Supercluster previously that Starlink has become nigh unjammable since the beginning of the war. In the early months, Russia’s jamming of the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite signal could disrupt Starlink links, but SpaceX has since developed an alternative technology, which allows it to use the constellation’s own signals to transmit positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) data.

Stepanets said that although Russia has made attempts to disrupt Starlink communications directly, the jamming technology is highly inefficient. Starlink relies on very narrow and focused beams that can only be disrupted or intercepted at close distances. On Ukrainian battlefields, these jammers get quickly located and immediately destroyed.

“They can cause a bit of disruption but certainly not break Starlink communication,” said Stepanets. “Neither on the battlefields in Ukraine, nor anywhere else, has anyone yet demonstrated even any noticeable success in suppressing low Earth orbit satellite networks.”

Given the importance of Starlink in the war in Ukraine, this untouchability of the mega-constellation leaves Russia pondering ideas of orbital mass destruction.

“They are really scrambling to figure out what to do about Starlink,” said Samson.