​According to an article recently published by AFP, China’s Chang Guang Satellite (CGSTL) sold satellite imagery to Nika Frut, a subsidiary of the Wagner Group, for $31 million earlier this year. . “Nika Fruit” is a company whose official main activity is fruit trade.

CGSTL is the first and largest private company in China that produces and sells detailed images of the Earth’s surface using Jilin satellites, usually in heliosynchronous orbit. In recent years, more than 100 such satellites have been launched, which form one of the most complex orbital groups designed to observe the Earth’s surface.

Although officially a private company, CGSTL has received financial support from the Beijing government in the past. The company hopes to have a constellation of 300 active satellites by 2025, which is not at all difficult to achieve given the launch rate of recent years.

Most of Jilin’s satellites have so far been launched using Changzheng rockets (operated by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, a state-owned agency that builds and launches rockets for the Chinese space agency), but also small launch vehicles (Kuaizhou, Hyperbola or Ceres). , operated by private or pseudo-private Chinese companies (ExPace, i-Space, respectively Galactic Energy)

A heliosynchronous orbit is an orbit that allows a satellite to pass over the same point on the Earth’s surface at the same local time every day. Thus, by superimposing information obtained over a longer period of time, the heliosynchronous orbit becomes an important tool in the surveillance of the territory, as it is possible to detect the movement of troops, new constructions or changes in the surrounding landscape. It is therefore easy to understand why images obtained in this way can be of strategic and tactical importance to military or paramilitary groups.

CGSTL was on the US sanctions list after allegedly providing confidential satellite information to Nika Frut, a company affiliated with the Wagner Group. In practice, Wagner’s group had direct access to images provided by two such Earth observation satellites (Jilin-01 GF03D-12 and Jilin-01 GF03D-13), which provided images with a resolution of less than 1 meter/pixel.

Satellites were used by the Wagner Group to obtain information from various African countries, as well as about the conflict zone in Ukraine or even Russia, which makes one wonder how much this information was used by Prigozhin during the summer uprising of this year, and whether Beijing had information about this operation to some Russian officials.

On the other hand, the Wagner Group would have to look outside of Russia for such satellite information, because the Russian space industry cannot build more than a few dozen satellites each year, which is not enough to support the civilian, academic and military sectors. About 2,400 satellites have already been launched this year, but a very small percentage (about 2%) of them are Russian satellites. And now in Russia there are about 220 active satellites in orbit, which is 2.5% of the total number of active satellites (almost 9,000, of which more than half are Starlink satellites).

CGSTL is not the first Chinese space company to be accused of ties to the Wagner Group: earlier this year, Spacety was also blacklisted by the US administration, also for allegedly providing satellite images to Russian mercenaries, as well as Beijing. Yunze Technology or Hyde Aerospace Technology.