U.S. National Security Council communications spokesman John Kirby warned Russia at a press conference Thursday that the United States will respond to possible attacks on its satellites following threats by a Russian official.
«I will simply say that any attack on U.S. infrastructure will be met with a response and will be appropriate to the threat it poses to our infrastructure,» he explained at a press conference, advanced by DPA.
These words come after the deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, Konstantin Vorontsov, assured a meeting of a United Nations General Assembly committee that U.S. commercial satellites «could become legitimate targets for attack» if they are deployed as part of the conflict in Ukraine.
«We are talking about the (possible) use by the United States and its allies of civilian infrastructure components in space, including commercial ones, in armed conflicts,» Vorontsov explained Wednesday, as picked up by the TASS news agency.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk deployed Starlink satellites in Ukraine days after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a «special military operation» in the country, a term used to refer to the war on Ukrainian territory.
The US tycoon said on October 15 that SpaceX’s Starlink terminals provided a «battlefield advantage» for Kiev that cost less than a new GPS satellite, according to Axios.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western commercial satellites have documented military developments on the front lines, as well as damage to Russian air bases and even mass graves in areas occupied by Russian forces.
