Russia Says It Could Target U.S. Commercial Satellites in Ukraine War

“We have never said anything on our own initiative about the possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia,” he said, “but only hinted at it in response to statements made by the leaders of Western countries.”

His remarks came as tensions between Russia and the U.S. continued to build, this time after Konstantin Vorontsov, a senior official in Russia’s Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday that if U.S. satellites were used to aid Kyiv, they “could be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike.”

“We would like to emphasize the extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of space technologies, which clearly manifested itself in the course of events in Ukraine,” Mr. Vorontsov told a meeting of the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, according to remarks published by the foreign ministry. “We are talking about the use by the United States and its allies of civilian infrastructure components in space, including commercial ones, in armed conflicts.”

Mr. Vorontsov, who is deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, didn’t name any company, but Elon Musk recently pledged that his company SpaceX would continue to fund access for the Ukrainian government to its Starlink satellite-internet system.

In addition, American satellite operators such as ViaSat Inc., Maxar Technologies Inc. and Planet Labs PBC have contracts to provide services to different U.S. national-security agencies. Representatives from those companies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Vorontsov made similar remarks in September, saying at a U.N. meeting on reducing space threats that the use of nonmilitary satellites represented indirect involvement in military conflicts.

A senior White House official said that any attack on U.S. infrastructure “will be met with an appropriate response in an appropriate way.”

“We’re going to continue to pursue all means to expose, deter and hold Russia accountable for any such attack should that occur,” said John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the White House National Security Council.

Asked whether Russia has the capabilities to conduct such an attack, Mr. Kirby said, “You can look at the public record yourself and see that the Russians have been trying to pursue antisatellite technology and capabilities.”

Starlink has emerged as an important tool for the Ukrainian military, keeping troops connected on front lines of the war where regular service isn’t available. Ukrainian officials have praised the system, pointing to instances where Starlink was able to provide connections after cruise-missile attacks damaged infrastructure, but have at times been wary of Mr. Musk.

Earlier this month, he tweeted that Crimea had been part of Russia since 1783 until 1954, when Moscow transferred the peninsula to the Ukrainian Soviet republic before illegally annexing it in 2014. He further annoyed some Ukrainians by tweeting that victory in a total war with Russia was unlikely because Russia had more than three times Ukraine’s population, before saying his company would continue to pay for the Starlink service.

Later, Ian Bremmer, the founder of political-risk consulting firm Eurasia Group, wrote in a newsletter that Mr. Musk had told him that he had spoken directly with Mr. Putin, saying that the Russian leader required several commitments from Ukraine to end the war, including that Kyiv recognize Russian sovereignty of Crimea and its annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

Mr. Musk tweeted that he had spoken with Mr. Putin only once, 18 months ago, to discuss space-related issues.

A range of Pentagon agencies, meanwhile, have been placing orders to use Mr. Musk’s SpaceX satellite capabilities despite a recent dispute between the two sides over the funding of satellite-based internet services for Ukraine, according to government documents.

It couldn’t be immediately determined whether Mr. Vorontsov’s comments about taking action against U.S. satellites referred to physical strikes or disabling them through cyberattacks.

Mr. Musk previously has indicated that SpaceX has faced Russian attempts to disrupt Starlink, which permits users with a company terminal to access internet connections via a growing fleet of satellites in orbit relatively close to Earth. In a tweet earlier this month, he said Starlink had come under “relentless jamming attacks.”

The Pentagon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Viasat, a Carlsbad, Calif.-based company, has said that it faced a deliberate cyberattack in late February on part of one of its networks that affected several thousand customers in Ukraine and tens of thousands of others across Europe. In May, the Danish Defense Ministry said it and allies believed that Russia was behind that attack, according to a statement at the time.

Some analysts said the statement from the Russian official was significant.

“It is a threat and a sort of escalation that can turn space into a battlefield earlier than anticipated,” said Arne Sönnichsen, coordinator for a network of researchers on security and technology in outer space called SichTRaum at Universität Duisburg-Essen in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

The Pentagon says it has already seen during the war in Ukraine that a distributed network of satellites—such as those used in the Starlink system—is more resilient against attacks than are single, larger satellites.

“It becomes a tougher targeting problem,” U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman told a Senate committee in September.

While Russia might have the technology, it likely doesn’t have enough missiles or killer satellites to cause serious damage, Mr. Sönnichsen said. He also said that any strike could create a field of debris that could damage Russian satellites, too.

Russia has tested both ground-based missile systems and a stalker satellite to track and take down other spacecraft in recent years, demonstrating its ability to attack objects in space.

In July 2020, Russia conducted a test of an antisatellite weapon, prompting concern that Moscow was working to improve its capability to attack American space-based systems. It was the first time since 2017 that Russia had used a satellite in orbit to release a projectile, according to the U.S. Space Command. No target was destroyed in that test.

Then in November 2021, a Russian missile hit one of its inoperative satellites, producing 1,500 pieces of trackable debris in orbit, as well as hundreds of thousands of smaller fragments, and endangering astronauts on the International Space Station, according to the U.S. State Department officials at the time. The space station had to make a maneuver earlier this week to avoid a fragment that resulted from the test.

Moscow defended its destruction of the satellite, saying it had carried out the tests because the U.S. was actively testing its own latest attack and combat weapons, including the latest modifications of the unmanned X-37 spacecraft, without any prior warning.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, meanwhile, last month blamed a series of explosions along the key Nord Stream gas pipelines running from Russia to Europe on sabotage, with some German officials saying they were working under the assumption that Moscow was responsible. Russia has denied responsibility.

—Yuliya Chernova and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this article.

Write to Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com and Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com