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 is also important to pay attention to, especially as Tunisia heads into a presidential election on October 6. It is almost guaranteed that populist leader Kais Saied will return. He will look for ways to demonstrate his country’s autonomy in international affairs. To that end, he may try to work with non-traditional partners like Russia in areas such as space collaboration.

Russia’s and Tunisia’s current space collaboration predates Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 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. On August 13 of the same year—coinciding with Women’s Day in Tunisia—Russian Space Agency Roscosmos and the Tunisian company Telnet signed an agreement to send the first Tunisian female astronaut to the International Space Station. This would be the first such trip by a female astronaut from anywhere in Africa.

The following year, eight candidates were selected for physical and medical testing, of which two were meant to travel to Russia for a year of training. Of these two, one astronaut would conduct the anticipated mission in early 2024 (delayed from the initial expected date). However, since 2023, TelNet has been embroiled in scandals, and finalists from the eight candidates do not appear to have been selected. Moreover, only one out of thirty satellites has been launched thus far. However, at the end of 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said his country planned to help Tunisia launch a second satellite the following year.

These activities have taken place in the broader context of Russian-Tunisian collaboration in areas such as technology and nuclear energy, elections, and cultural and educational exchanges. Trade between the two countries is reportedly also growing, with an increase in Tunisian imports of Russian grain and energy products in 2023—the latter reportedly climbing by 435 percent in 2022.

Delays or failures as part of this ongoing space collaboration between Russia and Tunisia do not preclude future gains for Russia. Perhaps most importantly, space collaboration expands Moscow’s opportunities for intelligence gathering. Indeed, U.S. officials raised concerns about Russia’s potential spying on Ukrainian troops after Russia launched the Iranian satellite Khayyam in August 2022 from Kazakhstan.

In addition, space collaboration could throw the ailing Roscosmos a lifeline. According to expert accounts, Roscosmos faces significant financial and technological challenges. Russia’s space program is also suffering thanks to the war in Ukraine, which is eliminating Russia’s massive legacy stocks of Soviet military materiel while derailing future capability development efforts at the expense of meeting immediate war-related requirements. The West also embargoed Russia’s space industry following the invasion. However, while the Ukraine war may have contributed to the delays in implementing its agreement with TelNet, Roscosmos’ collaboration with third countries such as Tunisia could help keep it afloat. This puts Russia in a better position to explore resources and even collaborate with China in space, as it has been since approximately 2021.

Indeed, in August 2023, Russia launched its first lunar probe in fifty years. The launch ended with a crash on the moon. Yet, Russia’s space collaboration with other countries continues. Recent discoveries suggest that the moon may hold billions of tonnes of water, which, among other things, is necessary to create hydrogen fuel.

The U.S. 2020 Defense Space Strategy identifies space as an emerging arena of great power competition and recommends promoting “favorable standards and norms of behavior in space” for that reason. Yet, as Russia seeks to challenge longstanding norms of international engagement, continual cooperation on space exploration puts Russia (not to mention China) in a position to establish new norms of behavior by building partnerships with countries that share mutual interests and potentially similar values. Such collaboration would also allow Russia and China to shape the narrative on what the conduct of space commerce, safety, and security should look like—a narrative that would counter Western values and standards. If Russia eventually helps send the first African woman into space, it would represent a political win for Moscow and bolster the global perception of Russia as a leader in space. 

The United States should invest resources into deepening its space cooperation with traditional partners such as Tunisia, the UAE (where Russia has also inked a space exploration deal, albeit less comprehensive than its program with Tunisia), and Saudi Arabia. The opportunity is ripe for the picking, and realigning these countries away from Russia and its already failing space program only serves the wider interests of the United States and its global partners.

Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on Russia’s policy towards the Middle East, and the author of a recent book, Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence.

Sabina Henneberg is the Soref Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where she focuses on North Africa. Sabina was formerly a Senior Analyst at Libya-Analysis LLC.

Image: Akimov Konstantin / Shutterstock.com.