Are These Satellite Images War Propaganda?

On February 20, the Russian Parliament had not yet authorized President Vladimir Putin to use military force outside the country, and Ukraine had not yet declared a state of emergency. In a television interview that day, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby maintained that Putin “has not conducted another invasion in Ukraine yet, and we still think there’s time to prevent that.” But to anyone who believed an invasion was imminent, the view from space seemed to prove it.

On CNN, satellite images revealed that, according to the chyron, Russian ground forces were headed toward the Ukraine border. Some of the photos clearly showed Russian military activity, including lines of tanks. But some of the photos showed only tire tracks in the snow and could have been mistaken for abstract paintings—or carpeted floors, as one Twitter user quipped. CNN anchor Pamela Brown asked retired Army General Mark Hertling for his perspective: “What do these images tell you?”

“Well, they’re still images,” he said, then hypothesized that they showed a military unit entering a staging area or headed “to an attack position. That is probably what’s going on. But you can’t just take the single images and draw a conclusion from it.” Military analysts, he said, would consider satellite images alongside “signals intelligence,” “moving targetry,” and “human intelligence from the ground.” But in Brown’s view, the satellite images looked like a definitive portent of war—“a picture putting all the intelligence together.” She asked another analyst to speculate on whether the images bolstered the belief of U.S. officials that “orders have been given to [Russian] commanders to proceed with an invasion.”