On the menu today: The Winter Olympics opening ceremony will air on NBC today. On paper, Russia and Belarus are not competing in this year’s games and have been banned for four years, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I say “on paper,” because 13 athletes from Russia and seven from Belarus will partake in the Milan Cortina Games, competing as “Individual Neutral Athletes.” At least we know whom to root against.
We in the West only hear about Russia sporadically, and that’s somewhat understandable with a big world, a busy news cycle, and a lot of competing geopolitical priorities. But the regime ruled by Vladimir Putin with an iron fist gets up every morning and sets about its work, aiming to maximize its leverage over other countries, undermine American interests, inflict as much misery and death on the Ukrainians as they can, and generally make the world a worse place in as many ways as possible. And the Russians have been busy lately; read on.
What’s New with Russia: Olympic Cyberattacks, Stealing Starlink and ‘Flying Chernobyl’
Beginning with the Olympics, the Russians continued their multi-cycle streak of launching cyberattacks against the Olympics and its participants and spectators:
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, speaking in Washington on Wednesday, announced that his nation’s security agencies had “foiled a series of cyberattacks” of “Russian origin.”
Tajani said the attempted attacks targeted numerous “Foreign Ministry offices, starting with Washington, and also some Winter Olympics sites, including hotels in Cortina.”
Past Olympic related cyberattacks came in Paris in 2024, and Pyeongchang in 2018. It is widely thought that Russian actors were behind them.
But the West has practically gotten used to regularly scheduled cyberattacks from Russian hackers, many of whom are state sponsored or state-instructed. Russia tops the world’s Cyber-Crime Index, with a score that is 60 percent higher than the country ranked number two . . . Ukraine. (China came in third, and the U.S. came in fourth, with a score less than half that of Russia.)
Perhaps the biggest Russian threat news of the week was reported by SatNews, which covers the international commercial satellite industry:
European security officials believe that at least 17 key European satellites have been shadowed or compromised by Russian signals intelligence (SIGINT) spacecraft over the past three years, sparking fears that Moscow could not only steal classified data but actively hijack the satellites to send them “hurtling back to Earth.”
The primary actors in this orbital espionage are the Russian satellites Luch-1 (launched in 2014) and Luch-2 (launched in 2023). According to tracking data from the French space situational awareness firm Aldoria, Luch-2 has engaged in risky close-range maneuvers, lingering within 20 to 200 kilometers of sensitive geostationary (GEO) assets for weeks at a time. Major General Michael Traut, head of German Space Command, confirmed that these Russian vehicles are likely intercepting “command links”—the unencrypted communication channels used by older satellites to receive instructions from ground control. . . .
In the most extreme scenario, hijacked commands could be used to burn a satellite’s remaining fuel to lower its perigee, causing it to burn up in the atmosphere or crash uncontrollably into Earth. . . .
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has warned that satellite networks are the “Achilles’ heel of modern societies,” noting that an attack on these systems could paralyze entire nations by taking out GPS, banking, and secure military communications.
Recall that Putin has claimed, “Russia had been against the militarization of outer space all along.”
Speaking of satellites, Elon Musk’s Starlink is barred from being used by the Russian government. This hasn’t prevented private Russian companies from obtaining Starlink terminals through intermediaries who falsely present the purchases as for personal use, and then passing them on to the Russian government, which distributes them to the Russian military forces. The good news is that SpaceX and the Pentagon have worked together to block that Russian use. The bad news is that Russia keeps trying to find new workarounds, such as mounting Starlink satellite terminal systems on its attack drones, which helps overcome Ukrainian air defense systems designed to jam GPS and radio signals. In a game of cat and mouse, the Ukrainians and SpaceX keep needing to find new ways to block those workarounds. Some good news this week:
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Thursday that Russia’s Starlink satellite internet terminals in Ukraine have been “cut off,” disrupting Russian military communications.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said SpaceX, which owns Starlink, is working with Ukraine to update a “whitelist” of approved and verified Starlink terminals, while unapproved Russian systems have been blocked.
“The Starlink terminals added to the ‘whitelist’ are working. The Russians’ terminals have already been blocked,” Fedorov said in a statement Thursday. “We continue to verify Starlink terminals. The first batch of terminals that made it onto the ‘whitelist’ are already operational.”
A source at the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces claimed that “all Russian Starlinks have been cut off” along the front line as of Thursday evening local time.
The Russians are apparently pretty mad about the possibility of losing their illicit access to Starlink; Vladimir Solovyov, a Kremlin propagandist on state television, fumed Monday night “What is Starlink? It’s the militarization of space. Because everything Musk has worked on operates in the interests of war against Russia. . . . So, I don’t understand why, for example, Elon Musk’s satellites are not legitimate targets for us. One nuclear detonation in space solves this problem quite effectively.”
The notion of detonating a nuclear weapon in space is not just idle chatter among the Russians. In February 2022, shortly before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia launched a satellite into space that is designed to test components for a potential antisatellite weapon that would carry a nuclear device, according to U.S. officials. That satellite is known as Cosmos-2553, more on that in just a bit.
A nuclear explosion in space would have far-reaching and likely deeply harmful consequences:
First, an atomic explosion would result in countless fragments of debris — or space junk ––due to a massive release of gamma particles (gamma blasts), which would destroy satellites within a radius of about 80 km. If these fragments were to hit satellites further away, they would also be damaged, thus creating more debris. Since satellites move at very high speeds in space, even the smallest fragments could cause significant destruction upon collision. Especially in the densely populated LEO, the number of these explosion-induced debris fragments — essentially transformed into projectiles — would be enormous.
In addition, a nuclear explosion in space would significantly increase radiation levels. The amount would depend on the explosive power of the nuclear weapon. A study by the US government suggests that the radiation from a lower-yield explosion (10–20 kilotons) in LEO would immediately affect 5 to 10 per cent of all satellites in space. Due to Earth’s magnetic field, the resulting surge in radiation would not subside quickly — it could persist for months, if not years. Even satellites not damaged immediately by the nuclear detonation would not remain operational for long. This is because a satellite’s onboard electronics would require more energy due to the radiation. As a result, the satellite’s altitude control, the electronic components themselves, and the communication link would gradually fail.
Finally, a nuclear explosion in space would generate an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). This would disrupt the onboard electronics of satellites. An EMP could also have severe effects on Earth if the explosion occurred in LEO. Although human lives would not be directly at risk, widespread power outages and severe long-term damage to electrical grids could be expected — leading to cascading consequences, such as serious disruptions to medical care.
In other words, if Russia deploys a satellite-based nuclear weapon, they will gain another form of mutually assured destruction by having the ability to inflict widespread and permanent damage to the world’s communication satellites. And if Moscow ever detonated that weapon . . . well, it wouldn’t take us back to the Dark Ages, but it would be a major setback for modern human civilization.
The good news is there is no evidence that Cosmos-2553 is carrying a nuclear weapon. The mixed news is that the Russians may have lost control of it:
A secretive Russian satellite in space that US officials believe is connected to a nuclear anti-satellite weapons program has appeared to be spinning uncontrollably, suggesting it may no longer be functioning in what could be a setback for Moscow’s space weapons efforts, according to US analysts.
The Cosmos 2553 satellite, launched by Russia weeks before invading Ukraine in 2022, has had various bouts of what appears to be errant spinning over the past year, according to Doppler radar data from space-tracking firm LeoLabs and optical data from Slingshot Aerospace, shared with Reuters.
As we have seen from the Aral smallpox release, the Nedelin catastrophe, Chernobyl, the Ufa train disaster, the Kursk, and various other non-natural Russian disasters, in the Moscow regime, the U.S. is not merely facing a foe of breathtaking ruthlessness and malevolence; we’re facing a foe of varying levels of competence in any given endeavor and on any given day.
For another more recent example, Russia is attempting to develop “a nuclear-powered cruise missile designed to fly low with a nearly unlimited range. It is also said to have mid-air navigation capabilities aimed at evading enemy missile defense systems.” The catch is that “the missile’s reactor has an open-air cooling system, releasing radioactive material from its exhaust. . . . The Bellona Foundation, a watchdog group that for decades had been working with nuclear safety in Russia, was soon to name Putin’s new missile ‘a flying Chornobyl.’”
The Russian state is always juggling nitroglycerin and just hoping for the best.
Closer to earth, the Moscow-Pyongyang alliance is growing closer and more useful to the Russian war effort, according to new reporting by the Wall Street Journal:
North Korean forces deployed to help Russia’s war against Ukraine are now operating surveillance drones, removing mines and executing artillery strikes, roles that illustrate the advancement in their combat skills after roughly 15 months of involvement in the conflict.
When North Korean troops first joined Russia’s war effort in 2024, they were deployed in what Western officials described as suicidal waves on the battlefield. Now, they are providing more skilled assistance, according to details released in a Ukrainian military intelligence report this week.
Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, writes in the Financial Times that the Russian government has figured out that by labeling Russian dissidents living in other countries as “terrorists,” they can get their bank accounts frozen, a status that is expensive and complicated to reverse, as “the process is 95 percent automated.” Russia has put 16,000 names onto its blacklist; the newspaper reports that Belarus, Turkey, and China are using the same strategy; apparently the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force’s operating rules ensure “western financial systems amplify Russian repression through risk-averse compliance that cannot distinguish Putin’s critics from his enablers.”
It would be nice if Western governments, institutions, and businesses could stop doing Putin’s work for him. I’m looking at you, Memphis Grizzlies owner Robert Pera.
This collection of news about Russian threats doesn’t even get into the wargame that suggested Russia could seize part of Lithuania and that the U.S. would decline to invoke NATO’s Article Five. In the simulation, “The German brigade already deployed to Lithuania failed to intervene, in part because Russia used drones to lay mines on roads leading out of its base.”
Still, it’s not all bad news on the Russian front. After four years of hobbling along in defiance of sanctions, the Russian economy is now really starting to buckle under the effect of the U.S. efforts to squeeze them on oil revenue:
Russian oil revenue plummeted by 50 percent in January compared with the same month the previous year after tough new sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury on Russian oil majors Rosneft and Lukoil in October. The penalties forced Moscow to accept ever-steeper discounts of more than $20 per barrel for its oil. Combined with India’s apparent agreement to halt Russian oil purchases in favor of increased imports from the United States and potentially Venezuela, the measures threaten to further strain the resources Moscow needs to fuel its war machine, risking crisis as non-payments grow across the economy.
Inspired by the seizure last month by U.S. forces of the Marinera tanker after a weeks-long pursuit despite a Russian submarine escort, the French navy briefly captured another suspected Russian shadow fleet tanker, the Grinch, which had been traveling from the Russian Arctic port of Murmansk across the Mediterranean carrying 730,000 barrels of oil under the flag of Comoros.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the vessel was subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag.
In other good news, the number two guy in Russian military intelligence had a bad run-in with the world’s most dangerous DoorDash deliveryman:
The No. 2 officer at the Russian military intelligence agency known as GRU was shot and wounded in Moscow, in what investigators called an assassination attempt.
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, 65, was hospitalized early on February 6 after being shot several times, including in the back, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. He was hospitalized in critical condition.
The shooter fled the scene, the committee said.
The newspaper Kommersant reported that investigators believe Alekseyev was shot twice by a person posing as a food delivery courier who had entered his apartment building. The newspaper said Alekseyev, who was on his way to work, was shot twice in the building’s stairwell and then a third time as he fended off the attack, after which the shooter fled the scene.
See, this is why you should cook at home more often. I suspect the only tip in that delivery was hollow.
ADDENDUM: Our MBD, holding nothing back in response to the news that “the Trump administration has said it will issue nearly 65,000 additional H-2B guest worker visas through September, effectively doubling the maximum number that can be issued in a year”:
We’re just cordoning off entire industries now and officially endorsing the idea that these are jobs Americans can’t or won’t do.
But before we resign ourselves to three years of Donald J. Bush, can we at least see if Donald J. Trump, the host of The Apprentice, is in there somewhere? Isn’t it time to start firing some people?
The first item in this week’s “The Most Erratic President in the World” edition of this newsletter was “he’s the rare kind of immigration hardliner who wants more H-1B visas.” A couple readers argued that wasn’t necessarily a contradiction, that you could staunchly oppose illegal immigration while wanting more employer-sponsored visas for immigrants to come here and work here legally.
Eh . . . can you double H-1B visas and still be considered a “hardliner” on immigration?