Russia's interest in banning space weapons is motivated by a desire to stunt the growth of US military space programs in order to buy time for covertly advancing its own space-weapons program and achieving technological parity. Russia bases its opposition to space weaponization not on a scrupulous set of principles but on strategic objectives.
Keywords: Russia.
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“Moratorium” is the wrong word, often deliberately so, because Moscow insisted it had never done anything it now had to stop. Once it became clear that the Reagan Administration was going to respond to a decade of space-to-space combat tests of an operational Soviet “killer-satellite”, Soviet premier Andropov applied diplomatic and propaganda pressure (to encourage Western political forces) by announcing that “the USSR would never be the first to test anti-satellite weapons”—a cynically-phrased promise that belied the fact that they had already been the first many years earlier. The promise was widely described in the West as a declared cessation of acknowledged space weapons testing, but Moscow insisted it was not, since it claimed that since it had never began testing, there was nothing it was doing that it was obligated to stop. That sounds like the way space lawyers (and space propagandists) quibble. Oberg, James. "The Dozen Space Weapons Myths." The Space Review. March 17, 2007.
Some people speak as if they believe that a country can choose whether to pursue national security through arms or through arms control. But Russia's interest in banning space weapons is motivated by a desire to stunt the growth of US military space programs in order to buy time for covertly advancing its own space-weapons program and achieving technological parity. Russia bases its opposition to space weaponization not on a scrupulous set of principles but on strategic objectives. Two scholars contend that "to understand whether Russia could indeed change its position on the weaponization of space, we need to go beyond official statements and discussion among Russian military experts. The course of the military space program in Russia will be determined primarily by the availability of the resources required to support the program and by the ability of the industry and the military to manage development projects for the military use of space." Brown, Trevor. "Soft Power and Space Weaponization." Air & Space Power Journal. XXIII, No. 1 (Spring 2009). [ 10 quotes ] [ page 67-8 ]