Russia’s Middle East Space Offensive

In the background of Russia’s war on Ukraine and continual conflicts across the Middle East, Moscow is quietly expanding space collaboration with the region. Its recent partnership with Tunisia is a small piece of a bigger picture unfolding across the Middle East, where Russia is utilizing all instruments of power to enhance its influence. Although most Western attention focuses on Russia’s hard power, Moscow’s use of space collaboration as an instrument of slow-moving soft power also merits attention. In 2019, Tunisia signed a deal with two Russian companies, SPUTNIX and GK Launch Services, to launch thirty satellites by 2023. Building on this agreement, in March 2021, Tunisia launched its first satellite, Challenge One, aboard Russia’s Soyuz-2 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan...

Read the full article on the National Interest website.