German Major General Michael Traut has warned that Russia may be developing technology to place nuclear devices in orbit – a move that, if detonated, would devastate global infrastructure. Traut estimated that up to one-third of low-earth orbit satellites, orbiting at less than 1,200 miles above Earth, could be disabled by an electromagnetic pulse, destroying communications, GPS, banking and military command. The debris would then trigger a domino effect of further collisions.
His warning echoes those of Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte and comes after months of escalating Russian disruption in space. Earlier this year, Russia moved satellites close to a radar satellite operated by a Finnish-Polish company and used by Ukrainian armed forces for intelligence. Experts at the Royal United Services Institute believe the manoeuvre may have been intimidation, intelligence-gathering, jamming or destruction. Russia has also been accused of causing GPS disruption across Europe, Greenland and Canada, with research linking the jamming to a group of Russian satellites. Tensions even spilled onto the International Space Station in early June: after air leaks in a Russian segment, cosmonauts planned to saw off a metal bracket, prompting NASA to order American astronauts to shelter in their own spacecraft. The Russians abandoned the plan.
“Russia may deploy nuclear weapons in space while facing troop shortages and a potential new mobilisation after September elections.”
The space front is not Russia’s only challenge. On the ground, the Kremlin is under growing pressure to replenish its army, which is seeing record-high fatalities of more than 30,000 per month and negligible progress at the front. The flow of new recruits enlisting to fight in Ukraine is down by more than a third this spring compared with a year earlier, according to data obtained by Verstka. Eight sources inside the presidential administration and military enlistment apparatus told Verstka and Vazhnyye Istorii that mobilisation is back on the table for the first time since the disastrous call-up in September 2022. That earlier mobilisation triggered an exodus of some 700,000 Russians – roughly the size of Moscow’s entire fighting force in Ukraine – disproportionately young, educated and affluent: 85% under 35 and 80% with higher education. Nearly 4tn rubles (£40.5bn) left the country in 2022.
Putin is believed to have been reluctant to return to mobilisation, relying instead on lucrative pay and signing bonuses for volunteers, and recruiting from the margins – prisoners, migrant workers and debtors. Alternative measures may include calling up reservists. Ukrainian military officials believe the Kremlin is also looking to recruit 18,500 foreigners; at least 27,000 foreign nationals from more than 130 countries have signed up so far, according to a report by Truth Hounds, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and regional partners. Average monthly regional payouts for recruiters have more than doubled this year, and a recruitment poster in St Petersburg advertised an annual salary of up to 7m rubles (£70,000). Applicants have increasingly been offered “rear” roles – drivers, guards, construction workers or even “peacekeepers” – before being dispatched to the front. In Penza, viral videos showed balaclava-clad draft officers seizing people on the streets.
Any new mobilisation is expected to be sold to the public after State Duma elections in September, Russian Telegram channels reported. But the combination of a potential nuclear escalation in space and a looming domestic call-up risks stretching Russia’s military and political resources to their limit.