By BlueShift | 2025-10-13

Kyiv has accused China of providing Russia with satellite data which the Kremlin has purportedly used for military purposes in Ukraine, heightening concerns about China’s indirect involvement in the conflict via intelligence sharing.

There is evidence of "high-level cooperation between Russia and China in conducting satellite reconnaissance of Ukraine's territory," Oleh Alexandrov of Ukraine's foreign intelligence service (SZRU) said October 4.

The goal of the Chinese reconnaissance is to identify strategic targets for Russian attacks, he told the Ukrinform news agency, noting that "these targets may belong to foreign investors."

(In August, a Russian missile struck a US-owned appliance factory in the westernmost region of Zakarpattia, injuring 15 people, Reuters reported.)

On October 4 and 5, Russian forces launched 53 missiles and about 500 drones, with most targeting Ukraine's Lviv region, the Ukrainian military said.

The region's governor Maksym Kozytsky described it as the largest attack of the war against Lviv.

The October 5 strikes killed five people and badly damaged energy infrastructure, temporarily severing power supplies to tens of thousands and prompting neighboring Poland to put ground defense on high alert, AFP reported.

"The overwhelming majority of targets were civilian objects and ordinary infrastructure" Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address.

"Near Lviv, an entire family of four was killed in their home, including a teenage girl," Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said.

Emergency services released photos showing firefighters battling flames in a destroyed building, and helping elderly residents to safety.

Attacks also killed one person in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia and wounded people near the eastern front, local authorities said.

At least four Chinese reconnaissance satellites flew over the Lviv region during the strikes, according to the Ukrainian military media outlet Militarnyi.

An analysis of data from the online satellite tracking service Heavens-Above showed the satellites all belonged to China's Yaogan series: Yaogan 33, Yaogan 33-03, Yaogan 33-04 and Yaogan 34, the outlet said.

The Chinese satellites made multiple passes over the area, it said.

According to Militarnyi, Chinese reconnaissance satellites regularly pass over Ukraine, with more than 60 Yaogan satellites on orbital paths that allow them to conduct surveillance.

Dual-use satellites raise questions

China claims its Yaogan satellites are used for peaceful purposes. But independent analysts and open-source observers speculate it is operating spy satellites to conduct intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance.

They say China's Yaogan series aligns with its long-standing pattern of deploying remote sensing satellites that serve both civilian and strategic purposes.

According to China Space Report, Chinese media has described the Yaogan series satellites as remote-sensing satellites for use in land survey, disaster forecasting, crops yield evaluation, urban planning and scientific experiments.

But the satellites are operated by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for imagery intelligence (IMINT) roles, it said.

The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp has said Yaogan 33 is tasked with scientific experiments and marine and land resources surveys, China Daily reported December 29, 2020.

China Daily is owned by the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department.

When the Yaogan 34 03 satellite launched in November 2022, China Daily claimed it would be used in areas such as land resources survey, urban planning, crop yield estimation, and disaster prevention and mitigation.

Chinese technology on the battlefield

Russian glide bombs previously relied on signals from Russia’s GLONASS satellite system, a constellation of satellites similar to GPS, Forbes reported in March.

But though it was newer than GPS, the GLONASS system proved more vulnerable to jamming -- a weakness the Ukrainians were able to exploit.

Russia has since integrated Chinese anti-jamming satellite receivers into its drone systems, per engineer Heiner Philipp of Technology United for Ukraine.

By early this year, roughly 80% of critical drone electronics in Russia were of Chinese origin, according to Ukraine’s intelligence service.

In April, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused China of supplying weapons and gunpowder to Russia, and said his government had intelligence that Beijing was producing weapons on Russian soil.

In May, Zelenskyy warned that China had effectively cut Ukraine off from critical drone supplies while keeping the pipeline open for Moscow.

Chinese representatives are present at drone production lines in Russia, Chinese-made Mavic drones are being routed to Russia, and Chinese military officers are on the front studying the war, with Beijing’s permission, he said.

China is directly supplying machine tools, special chemicals, gunpowder and other components to some 20 Russian military factories, David Kirichenko of the Henry Jackson Society wrote for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

"Beijing has made clear it does not want the war to end and Russia to lose," Kirichenko said in an October 9 analysis.

China views Ukraine as "the battlefield that weakens the West while advancing its own vision of an autocracy-led world, starting with Taiwan," he said.