Imaging Satellites Can Protect Ceasefire, Peacekeeper Lives In Ukraine

Forbes

5 hours ago

Images captured by futuristic satellites circling the globe—of Russian tanks crashing the border with democratic Ukraine—were blasted out to iPhone screens across the continents.
Spectators stretching from elite EU campuses to the Elysée Palace were captivated when Ukraine's outgunned defenders began launching miniature weaponized drones that halted the armored battalions, whose retreat was imaged in technicolor by spacecraft hundreds of kilometers above the Earth.
These robotic photographers, whizzing through orbit at 28,000 kilometers per hour, seemed to change the world—and the war—overnight.
Their sensational imagery of the lightning invasion of Ukraine, and its remarkable defense, generated allies for the embattled nation around the world.
Yet these celestial imagers might also aid a future peacemaking coalition deployed to help halt the conflict, predicts Valerie Sticher, a renowned scholar on peace initiatives and conflict resolution at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich.
Imaging satellites often provide the sole means to safely monitor the most dangerous war zones, and could play a pivotal role in supporting peacekeepers sent to observe a future ceasefire agreement in Ukraine, says Dr. Sticher.
One of the globe's top experts on the use of remote sensing technology, including imaging satellites, in ceasefire monitoring, Sticher tells me in an interview that photographs of conflict zones captured by orbiting spacecraft have already been used to help observers steer clear of high-risk hotspots.
As satellite-based cameras and radar imaging tech become more advanced and extensive, she says, they could become essential tools in observing truces in war-torn regions like Ukraine.
'I don't think the use of satellite images and other remote sensing technology (such as cameras mounted on drones) can directly replace human ceasefire monitors,' she says.
'But they can play an important role in expanding monitoring to areas where human monitors cannot go for safety reasons.'
Ceasefire monitoring teams can now use satellite-based photographers as avatars to chronicle trenches, tanks, troops and other dangers.
Satellite 'imagery can also provide photographic evidence that is harder to dispute than witness accounts—an important advantage in the context of potential disinformation campaigns,' Sticher says.
This transformation of imaging sats into surrogate truce observers began during an earlier ceasefire operation in Ukraine mounted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The OSCE deployed its 'Special Monitoring Mission' team of hundreds of unarmed observers as part of a ceasefire agreement that Moscow only haltingly signed onto after its troops led the surprise takeover of the Ukrainian region of Crimea, and then started arming Moscow-backed militias along the nearby borderlands.
Yet the terms of the truce provided no enforcement mechanisms for ceasefire violations, much less for punishment of any party breaking the agreement.
As a result, violations exploded, sometimes endangering the patrols of the peacekeepers.
In 2017, after a surreptitiously planted landmine killed peacekeeper Joseph Stone, an American paramedic, the ceasefire contingent ramped up reliance on satellites to monitor especially hazardous sectors surrounding the 400-kilometer-long 'line of contact' separating the two sides in the conflict.
U.S. Senator Roger Wicker said at the time that he lamented Joseph Stone's 'tragic death' while carrying out peacekeeping duties 'in territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists.'
Wicker, who is now the powerful chairman of the Senate's Armed Services Committee, added: ''Russian-led separatist forces continue to commit the majority of ceasefire violations' in Ukraine, and said OSCE observers were likely deliberately targeted by the Russian-supported militants.
Sticher, who has headed a series of leading studies on ceasefire monitoring aided by advanced satellite technologies, says in one paper: 'The war in Ukraine has pushed the role of satellite imagery in armed conflicts into the spotlight.'
During the first space race, the superpowers began launching super-secret spacecraft to detect the firing of nuclear missiles and map enemy military installations.
But with the new-millennium NewSpace race, expanding constellations of independent satellites outfitted with sophisticated cameras, she says, are being 'employed by a wide range of human rights, humanitarian, and peacekeeping actors to mitigate the impact of violence or support the resolution of armed conflicts.'
The peacekeeping operation in Ukraine has been lauded worldwide for its leading-edge use of satellites and uncrewed aerial vehicles, or drones, equipped with cameras to provide real-time detection of troop movements, missile batteries and the flow of refugees away from battlefronts.
But the makeshift ceasefire agreement, riddled with breaches, sometimes placed the monitors in high-risk situations.
'OSCE staff reported that the risk of UAVs being shot down was a serious impediment to monitoring,' Sticher and her colleague Aly Verjee, a scholar at Sweden's University of Gothenburg, say in one study.
The ceasefire operation lost dozens of drones blasted by belligerents, partly due to 'resistance to being monitored.'
And while satellites that passed overhead every 90 minutes provided staggered snapshots of changes along the frozen battlefront, they add, 'Over time, the parties became apt at camouflaging their heavy weapons systems' to hide from these high-altitude scouts.
Sticher lauds the peacekeepers who served in the earlier ceasefire operation, which ended with Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. She adds that a colleague at ETH Zurich, Alexander Hug, co-led that mission and penned a captivating first-hand account on his team and their satellite backup.
Hug says in his chronicles on the conflict that his peacekeeping contingent relied on satellite cameras to track an ever-changing labyrinth of dangers produced by the smoldering war.
Satellites helped his ceasefire observers track major changes on the battlefield, including 'the positions of the forces, damage to critical infrastructure, [and] the presence of weapon systems and other military-type installations.'
'If satellite imagery revealed newly placed anti-tank mines on a patrolling route,' he says, 'the Mission first deployed a UAV in the area to verify the facts and could, if the mines were still in place, re-route the patrol.'
In a preface to Hug's report, Philippe Étienne, former French ambassador to the U.S., says although the ceasefire endeavor 'could not prevent Russia's aggression against Ukraine, it helped to contain violence during the phase it was active.'
And while the truce was pummeled by outbreaks of violence, 'predominantly by Russian troops and affiliated armed group troops in eastern Ukraine,' Ambassador Étienne says, the peacekeeping team 'managed to negotiate temporary pauses in the fighting, to enable the evacuation of civilians caught in the middle of the war.'
Yet Étienne, who also served as chief diplomatic adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron, suggests the peacekeeping mission, its next-generation satellite wingmen, and even the house-of-cards ceasefire pact should all be studied in advance of crafting any future truce arrangement for Ukraine.
France has been the major global power to press the Kremlin to enter ceasefire talks with Ukraine, and co-shaped a new round of EU sanctions against Russia until it does so.
So far, the White House has failed to match the new European sanctions or the stepped-up pressure on Vladimir Putin to suspend the fighting during peace negotiations.
Yet French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said during a recent roundtable with journalists and scholars, hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank, that Paris and Washington might still join forces to cajole Moscow into joining a ceasefire summit.
'Right now, the main obstacle to peace is Vladimir Putin,' said Minister Barrot.
During his stopover in Washington, Barrot added, he praised 'Senator Lindsey Graham, who put together a massive package of sanctions … aimed at threatening Russia into accepting a ceasefire.'
Senator Graham has already amassed a veto-proof majority in the Senate backing the bill, and Minister Barrot said the centuries-old allies could coordinate to quickly push for truce talks.
At the same time, there has been a rush of global peace advocates offering to host ceasefire negotiations.
During the very first mass he celebrated to mark his out-of-the-blue election as the new Bishop of Rome, Pope Leo XIV lamented: 'Martyred Ukraine awaits negotiations for a just and lasting peace.'
Building on the anti-war legacy of Pope Francis, who was a prime force behind the promulgation of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Pope Leo also met privately with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and proposed the world's smallest nation—Vatican City—could help stage a first round of peace talks with the holder of the globe's biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons, Russia.
Switzerland, which hosted a 'Summit on Peace in Ukraine' last year, could play a key role in brokering and monitoring a future ceasefire, says Dr. Sticher.
The quest to end wars and promote peace across the continents is such a central element in Switzerland's identity that it is enshrined in the Swiss constitution.
Halting the barrage of bullets and missiles that is decimating Ukraine could draw on a wealth of scholarship and experience across Switzerland, Sticher says: 'Switzerland can play a role, there is Swiss expertise in both ceasefire mediation and ceasefire monitoring.'
Any new ceasefire agreement, Dr. Sticher adds, must avoid repeating the mistakes of the earlier pact.
'The new ceasefire should be clear and strong in outlining strategies for dealing with violations,' she says. The truce should also 'explicitly provide for the incorporation of technology such as satellite imagery into a future ceasefire observation mission.'
'If the two sides reach an agreement on a ceasefire with a demilitarized zone, and agreement on what types of weapons can be in what proximity of this zone,' she says, 'then satellite imagery could be used to verify that the parties comply with this agreement.'
In ceasefires of the future, Sticher adds, expanding use of satellite imagery 'can be an invaluable tool to support human monitors'—by helping document the ever-changing dangers of battle zones and by providing crystal-clear evidence of truce violations.