Putin's iron firewall is porous

Russians can see more of the Ukraine war after three months than we saw during the entire Vietnam war.

In 1946 Winston Churchill declared that Russia had lowered an iron curtain across Europe and in 2022 Vladimir Putin created an iron firewall between the Russian Internet and media and the rest of the world but, like its precursor, it is porous. Information wants to be free.

As of May 26, Russia had blocked access to 1,548 domains, including 1,142 news sites and 287 digital-resistance sites. The distribution of domain locales is also skewed -- Ukraine 647, the US 523, and Russia 218 are the top three. Given this blocking, it is not surprising that Russians turned to virtual private networks (VPNs).

As shown here, Russian interest in VPNs as measured by Google searches for the term "VPN" has spiked twice.  The baseline level is roughly 5% of the peak period after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The earlier spike -- 26% of the peak -- occurred when the US sanctioned Russia for interference in our 2016 election.

Daily downloads of the ten most popular VPNs

Daily downloads of the 10 most popular VPNs also spiked in the days after Russia invaded and Russians are using those VPNs. Psiphon, a popular VPN, averaged 867,400 unique daily users during the twenty days beginning May 2 and it has risen slowly, but steadily since the invasion to 929,000 on May 27 and the users on May 28 made 4,755,000 connections.

Several messaging services are currently unblocked in Russia. The most surprising to me is Telegram which has around 38 million Russian users visiting it at least once a month. If they have the same level of access as I do, they can see Washington Post coverage of the war, President Zelensky's standing-ovation addresses to parliaments and other important audiences, news and graphic photos, and videos of Russian war crimes. and follow the activities of The Ukrainian IT Army. 

When Russia celebrated Victory in Europe Day, an audacious hack occurred. Hackers placed fake stories on Lenta.ru, a popular Russian news site. The hack was quickly discovered and corrected, but not before the Internet Archive backed it up. Below is a Google Translation of a portion of the hacked front page. Note that the hack went beyond the front page -- each front-page headline linked to a complete article.

Many Ukrainians speak Russian and have friends and family members in Russia. They can use the Internet to tell their friends and families what they have witnessed, and you can do the same using a messaging service created by Squad 103 a group of Polish programmers.

The service, which sent over 100 million messages in less than two months, allows anyone anywhere in the world to message cellphones and email addresses of random Russian individuals and companies. To send a message, you select a messaging application -- SMS, WhatsApp, email, Viber, Telegram, or phone call and write or select an appropriate message.

(I'm not sure how or if it is possible to distinguish between the activity of Squad 103, the Ukrainian IT Army, and Anonymous in Ukraine).

Ukraine is also using facial recognition to identify Russian soldiers who have been captured, killed, or are caught in the act of looting or other war crimes. They follow up by investigating the war crimes and informing the families of dead soldiers. They defend the latter by saying they offer the soldier's families the possibility of claiming the bodies and fighting Russian propaganda, but they say that is effective in only about 20% of the cases.

I've focused on the Internet, but mass media is also vulnerable. The Economist reports that the state controls the country’s television channels, newspapers, and radio stations, giving "guidance" as to what and how to cover. But, despite Putin's efforts, the truth sometimes appears in mass media.

The sign reads "NO WAR. Stop the war. Don't believe
the propaganda. They are lying to you here."

The most theatrical example was when Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee of Russia's state TV Channel One, interrupted a live newscast with a handwritten No-War poster. She was arrested, but surprisingly, fined $280 and freed. She is now working as a correspondent for the German Die Welt newspaper, reporting from Ukraine and Russia.

Military analyst & retired colonel Mikhail Khodarenok surprised fellow panelists by arguing with Olga Skabeyeva, the anchor of Russia's “60 Minutes” talk-show program. He said the war was going poorly and would get worse, arguing that a million patriotic Ukrainian soldiers were ready to fight to defend their nation while Russian army morale was low, Russia is geopolitically isolated, and Ukraine was well supplied by the west. My favorite moment in the argument is when Khodaryonok invoked the "classics" of Marxism-Leninism in refuting Skabeyeva when she challenged the professionalism of the Ukraine fighters. Two days later, on the same program, Khodaryonok predicted an ultimate Russian victory.

The most innovative mass-media hack occurred on Victory in Europe Day when every program listing in the online TV guide service was changed to read (in translation) "On your hands is the blood of thousands of Ukrainians and their hundreds of murdered children. TV and the authorities are lying. No to war".

Writing this, I am reminded of the Vietnam war. Criticism of the war was freely available in print and electronic media in the US and public protests were common. It was nothing like Russia today. But the rate and quality of anti-war information reaching Russia today far exceed those of the Vietnam war. 

We saw iconic photographs -- a terrified nine-year-old girl running screaming and naked after she was napalmed or Major General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan calmly shooting a bound prisoner in the head at point-blank range. Equally disturbing photos from Ukraine are posted to Telegram every day. We eventually learned of the Mỹ Lai massacre in Vietnam, but Russians can see Mariupol and Bucha today. (Do a Google Image search for Bucha atrocity or go to President Zelensky's Telegram channel and search for Bucha).

Update 7/18/2022

The Open Technology Fund, a U.S. government-funded nonprofit, is supporting three firms that offer their VPN service in Russia for free -  nthLink, Psiphon, and Lantern and it's paying off. On May 27 there were 929,000 unique daily users of the Psiphon VPN in Russia, and it has grown steadily. It was 2.113 million on July 18th.

Update 8/27/2022

To celebrate Ukraine’s Independence Day, dozens of IP cameras with speaker outputs have been hacked to play patriotic music in Russia as well as occupied Crimea and Donbas. Here are a couple of stills from the video.

The Russian anti-satellite demonstration -- a month later

It was a "demonstration," not a "test."

On November 15, Russia demonstrated its ability to destroy an orbiting satellite, Cosmo 1408, by hitting it with a direct-ascent rocket. In an earlier post, I noted the anti-satellite demonstration and speculated on why Russia may have done it and why the Chinese had not condemned it. In this post, I'll look at the evolution of the resulting debris cloud and say more about the possible motivation.

In the immediate aftermath of the collision, when the debris fragments were closely bunched, there was fear of a possible collision with the Chinese or International Space Stations, but over time, the fragments began to spread out, as shown below. (Click the image to enlarge it).

By November 16, LeoLabs had detected 288 debris objects, 253 of which are shown in the Gabbard plot on the left,. A Gabbard plot shows the altitude of the apogee and perigee and the period of each of the orbiting debris fragments. (The circled points show the apogee and perigee of one of the fragments). By December 7, more objects had been tracked and Jonathan McDowell generated the second plot. Its clear that the debris cloud is spreading out with time as more objects are detected and tracked. 

The December 17 visualization from LeoLabs shows the debris as completing a rough orbital plane. (I say it is approximately 591 objects because that was the number of orbiting objects in the Space-Track.org satellite catalog on  December 17 and LeoLabs may have been tracking more since they have the ability to track smaller objects). The fourth image is a visualization of over 2,000 objects six months after a Chinese anti-satellite test in 2007. It foreshadows the ongoing spread of Cosmos 1408 debris.

By December 17, Space-Track.org had tracked 604 objects, 13 of which had been driven to low altitudes and had already decayed. (One of those was from an earlier accident). The characteristics of the orbits of the remaining 591 debris objects are shown below:

The altitudes shown above are near those of many currently approved broadband constellations as well as numerous constellations for Earth observation, automotive, military, and other applications, not to mention apparent nut-cases like Rwanda's application for 327,230 satellites. Furthermore, higher altitude satellites will have to cross these debris orbits on the way up and the way down when they are retired.

Shortly after the breakup, LeoLabs predicted there would eventually be from 1,500 to 2,500 debris objects, but when Jonathan McDowell pointed out that the intercept was generally in the same direction as the satellite vector they reduced their estimate of the number of debris objects and increased expected apogees. While they expect fewer objects, the average mass and size will be greater and they will remain in orbit for longer times.

LeoLabs summed it up by stating that "this occurred at one of the worst possible orbits" and "there will be some potential collision risk to most satellites in LEO from the fragmentation of Cosmos 1408 over the next few years to decades." 

Was it a "test" or a "demonstration?

The Russians chose a relatively large satellite at a dangerous altitude for the "test." Cosmos 1408 had a mass of ~2,200 kg. It orbited with an apogee of 490 km and a perigee of 465 km and its radar cross-section was 8.63 m^2. The U.S. military classifies objects over 1 m^2 as large and  India chose a safer 283 km altitude for their 2019 test.

Russia warned on state television that this "test" showed they could blow up 32 GPS satellites with this new anti-satellite technology, and they tied it to their troop buildup on the Ukrainian border. (GPS satellites orbit at much greater altitude).

This was not Russia's first anti-satellite test. They had previously conducted 10 direct-ascent and 22 co-orbital tests. Ten of the co-orbital tests had hit targets and produced small amounts of debris and the direct-assent tests were preceded by technically similar anti-missile tests. Those were tests. This was a demonstration.

The debris from the destruction of this satellite will not trigger a Kessler syndrome or put SpaceX out of business today, but it reflects a defiant, irrational attitude that threatens the space commons. Imagine the impact of such a collision if it were to occur five or ten years from now.

Related links

Listen to this podcast interview of Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation. Weeden puts the Russian demonstration in its political and historical context and discusses efforts to achieve an international ban on the destruction of orbiting objects.

For a discussion of the difficulty of accurately tracking orbiting satellites and debris and acting in time to avoid collisions, check out The Dilemma of Space Debris by David Fikleman -- "This process is very much like quantum mechanics, in which an entity is described by a probability density and a future state can only be estimated statistically." (You can see the 2014 first draft of this article here).

Update 12/26/2021

LeoLabs has released a third assessment of the Russian anti-satellite demonstration. They focused on the above-cited recognition by Jonathan Mcdowell that this was not a head-on hypervelocity collision. The report estimates the number of fragments and the distributions of their size and mass, which will be refined as more objects are tracked.

They plan to continue tracking debris created by the collision and to refine their estimate of its impact, which is that "the statistical probability of collision for satellites with mission-terminating debris in the 300–800 km altitude range has likely doubled due to this event, and will remain high for many years."

Characteristics of non-hypervelocity and hypervelocity collisions 

Update 1/3/2022

Jonathan McDowell's Space Activities in 2021 presents a detailed recap of the year in space. This year's edition includes a December 31 update on the Russian anti-satellite demonstration. The Space Force is now tracking 904 debris objects and the total may eventually be more than twice that. 

McDowell also reports the number of breakups and debris events for the year. There were five in addition to the Cosmos 1408 demonstration. 

He also mentions newly cataloged objects from earlier breakups.

Update 10/17/2022

The majority of tracked Russian ASAT debris has been deorbited -- 1,122 of the 1,783 tracked objects have decayed and are no longer in orbit. That's the good news. The bad news is that the Space Force 19th Space Defense Squadron, which tracks debris, generates 300,000 conjunction data messages a day identifying potential close approaches. “Of that, 53,000 of those are Cosmos 1408-related.”

Why did Russia test an anti-satellite missile and why doesn't China condemn the test?

Apogee (blue) and perigee (orange) of 253 of the 288
confirmed debris objects two days after the COSMOS 1408
breakup (source)

On November 15th, Russia used an anti-satellite missile to destroy COSMOS 1408, a defunct spy satellite. The explosion quickly created over 1,500 pieces of trackable debris and will likely generate hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces. As a precautionary measure, the astronauts on the International Space Station, two of whom are Russians, took shelter in escape shuttles during two orbits.

The anti-satellite test was widely criticized but the Russian defense ministry released a statement  saying “The U.S. knows for certain that the resulting fragments, in terms of test time and orbital parameters, did not and will not pose a threat to orbital stations, spacecraft, and space activities.”

That is simply not true and there is no doubt that officials in the nation that brought us Sputnik knew it. While the explosion occurred above both the International and Chinese space stations, the fragment cluster instantly began disbursing. As shown above, two days later some of the visible fragments were below the space stations and all will remain in orbit for many years.

That raises the question -- why did they do it? In space, as with nuclear war, mutually-assured destruction is the best guard against an attack, but Russia clearly had the ability to destroy a satellite without this test. Where would Russia be without GLONASS, their global navigation and positing system? Where would we all be without our Earth observation satellites? 

Similarly, why hasn't China condemned the act? China has a space station and plans for many satellites including a 12,992 satellite broadband constellation and they have established aggressive rules for space situational awareness and traffic management. Furthermore, the 14th five-year plan period (2021-25) of the China National Space Administration includes a section on "expanding space cooperation and enhancing the common well-being of humankind." China has a lot to lose.

I can't imagine why Russia destroyed COSMOS 1408 or why China has not denounced the destruction. Are Russia and China trying to slow the progress of SpaceX and other private competitors? Anne Applebaum has coined the term "Autocracy Inc" to describe China, Russia, and several other nations as a club bound together by "a common desire to preserve and enhance their personal power and wealth." She says the members support and don't criticize each other.

I know I'm starting to sound like a Qanon conspiracy theorist, but I can't think of any rational explanations.

Update 1/25/2022

The Space Debris Monitoring and Application Center of the China National Space Administration warned of an "extremely dangerous rendezvous" between China's Tsinghua Science satellite and Russia's Cosmos 1408 debris. Liu Jing, a space debris expert, said the closest distance between Tsinghua's satellite and the Russian debris was 14.5 meters, with a relative speed of 5.27 kilometers per second. There was no collision and subsequent data show the distance between the two objects has increased to five kilometers.

As far as I know, this is the first time the Chinese have spoken out against the Russian anti-satellite demonstration. (For more on the aftermath of the demonstration, see this post).