Chinese satellites flew over Ukraine during massive Russian attack – Militarnyi media

During the massive Russian attack on October 5, at least three Chinese SAR reconnaissance satellites flew over west of Ukraine, which bore the brunt of the attack, reported specialized resource Militarnyi with a link to the data from the Heavens Above monitoring service, which tracks the movement of satellites.

Among other things, the Yaogan 33 series satellites were recorded flying over Lviv: Yaogan 33, Yaogan 33-03 and Yaogan 33-04. In total, they flew nine times from 00:00 to about 11:30 in the morning.

Later, around 6:00, an optical reconnaissance satellite entered the region Yaogan 34 – It will make seven rounds over the region during the day.

"It's worth noting that Chinese reconnaissance satellites fly not only over the western regions of Ukraine. In general, the orbital parameters allow more than 60 different types of Yaogan satellites to operate over Ukraine. They can perform optical, radar and electronic reconnaissance," the media outlet noted.

The satellites of this series are located in low orbits at an altitude of about 700 kilometers, which allows them to make a complete revolution around the problem about once every hour and a half.

According to the resource, Yaogan 33 is believed to be a military reconnaissance satellite equipped with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR), similar to the ICEYE satellites, some of which uses Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR).

Militarnyi notes that it is not known whether these Chinese satellites conducted actual reconnaissance during their flights over Ukraine.

• On October 4, the Foreign Intelligence Service reported that China was providing Russia with satellite intelligence data to launch missile strikes against Ukraine, in particular for foreign investors' facilities.