Plans for satellite ground station reinforce Myanmar regime’s ties to Russia

Since ousting Myanmar’s elected government and installing a military junta in 2021, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has counted diplomatic support and military aid from Vladimir Putin’s government in Russia among his regime’s highest priorities. The junta chief has made a visible effort to portray Myanmar as Russia’s most reliable ally in Southeast Asia. He voiced his support when Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and arranged to meet with Putin soon afterwards, courting Russian officials’ confidence while they faced worldwide opprobrium and sanctions for aggressing against a neighbour. To date, Myanmar is also the only member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to have received supplies of Su-30SME fourth-generation fighter jets and advanced Mi-38T helicopters from Russia, suggesting relations more characteristic of a strategic alliance than a trading partnership. The coup leader’s efforts have yielded results, including agreements to help develop Myanmar’s nuclear energy capability and a memorandum of understanding for the Russian state corporation Rosatom to construct a nuclear power plant in the country. Now Roscosmos—another state corporation serving as Russia’s space agency—is preparing to build an Earth terminal for satellite communication in Myanmar, allowing the military to connect more easily with the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) controlled by Russia’s defence ministry. Last month, Roscosmos’s general director Dmitry Bakanov finalised the agreement for the Earth terminal—or ground station—at a meeting with Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyitaw. The GLONASS system is a vital part of Putin’s effort to restore Russia’s status as a world power, expanding its influence through political and military alliances. Many African countries using Russian weapons rely on GLONASS. Venezuela—a Russian ally whose president Nicolás Maduro was taken captive by the United States (US) forces in January—began constructing a GLONASS ground station in July 2025 after purchasing Russian air defence systems. However, while it is clear how Russia profits from exporting the technology, recent events in Venezuela raise questions about its practical benefits for the security of its partners, including Myanmar. Rather than strengthen the Myanmar military’s defences against external threats, the satellite technology is far more likely to serve as another weapon for the military regime to deploy against the weakened, ill-equipped resistance inside the country. The Russia-Myanmar partnership Although the junta chief’s reasons for cultivating closer relations with Putin extend beyond the Myanmar military’s history of cooperation with Russia, the military partnership between the countries has deep roots. In 1962, the implementation of a “Burmese Road to Socialism” by Myanmar’s first coup leader, Ne Win, helped cement ties with the Soviet Union (USSR) and secure support from Moscow in the form of state-of-the-art technology. The USSR helped build the Rangoon Institute of Technology in 1958 as a gesture of friendship towards then-premier Ne Win’s “caretaker government”, just a few years before he led the military in Myanmar’s first post-independence coup d’état in 1962. Since then, the Myanmar military’s familiarity with Russian technology has only grown. When people across Myanmar joined a pro-democracy uprising opposed to Ne Win’s ongoing dictatorship in 1988, few imagined then that the Berlin Wall would fall in less than a year, bringing down Soviet-allied European governments for good and presaging the communist superpower’s final disintegration in 1991. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the USSR’s former Eastern European allies strove to build strong democratic institutions, resisting external influences and forces at home that might have led to authoritarian backsliding. At the same time, Myanmar’s democratic movement was forced back underground and into exile by a violent crackdown on protests, the military brass’s political manoeuvring, and the establishment of a new and more severe military dictatorship. The Myanmar military’s partnership with Russia strengthened under the rule of the dictator who came to dominate the new regime, Senior General Than Shwe. Under his command, the army and air force purchased billions of dollars’ worth of modern fighter jets, helicopters, air defence missile systems, and radar systems. To this day, the Myanmar air force’s fleet—including the Russian MiG-29 and Yak-130 fighter jets, Mi-17 transport planes, and Mi-35 gunships used in the ongoing civil war—consists largely of aircraft purchased from Russia during Than Shwe’s rule. The dictator also dispatched thousands of officers and soldiers to Russia for weapons training, with the result that many of the military’s senior personnel can still speak Russian. Among all ASEAN member states, Myanmar’s military still relies most heavily on Russian arms, military technology, and tactical training. Russia’s satellite communication system The space race between the US and USSR was at its peak in 1976, when the Soviet Union began launching more communication satellites to develop GLONASS, the Soviet answer to the Global Positioning System (GPS) developed in the US. Achieving global coverage for a satellite communication system requires sending enough satellites into orbit, a goal destined to take years using Cold War-era technology. The USSR planned to establish the full network by 1991, but its progress towards this goal was delayed by the Soviet collapse. Even after the USSR’s largest successor state, the Russian Federation, launched the target number of satellites by 1995, the country’s economic hardship made maintenance difficult and forced the suspension of the project. Officials revived the development of GLONASS as a major strategic priority after Putin became Russia’s president in 2000, and began to replace the outdated GLONASS-M satellite series in 2011 with the GLONASS-K series. Further upgrades followed, culminating in the launch of the latest GLONASS-K2 satellites in 2023. In 2021, Russia selected Indonesia as the first ASEAN country to serve as a site for a GLONASS ground station. The Russian embassy announced in February of this year that Myanmar is set to become the second, coinciding with a visit to Naypyitaw by Roscosmos general director Dmitry Bakanov. The visit appeared to follow from a five-year military cooperation agreement signed last month in Naypyitaw by Min Aung Hlaing and Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s former minister of defence and current security council secretary. GLONASS in Myanmar The latest generation of Russian-designed fighter jets, helicopters, drones, guided missiles, and smart bombs rely on the GLONASS system for precision targeting. These include the Su-30SME fighters, Mi-38T transport helicopters, Orlan-10E reconnaissance drones, and the Pantsir-S1 and S-125 Pechora-2M air defence missile systems the Myanmar military has purchased since the 2021 coup, along with Mi-35 attack helicopters acquired earlier. The system also equips ground forces with real-time tracking and command capability, enabling coordination over expansive logistics networks. Although the junta also uses armaments from China and North Korea that can operate effectively with access to other systems, efficient access to GLONASS is clearly vital for the Myanmar military to operate the most advanced military technology and lethal weapons systems it uses. It is equally clear, however, that countries shifting away from GPS to alternative systems have experienced little immediate benefit. Venezuela—which has forged closer ties to Russia for years amid tensions with the US—agreed to host its own GLONASS-based ground station last year as part of a general effort to rely less on US-based GPS. For similar reasons, Iran decided last year to abandon GPS in favour of Beidou, the satellite communication system developed in China as a counterpart to GLONASS and GPS. These decisions may have advanced each country’s long-term strategy of reducing dependence on technology from an adversarial power and strengthening digital sovereignty. However, it did little to strengthen their security in the short term or prevent escalation of tensions with the US. Earlier this year, the US military captured and imprisoned Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and killed Ali Khamenei—the head cleric and highest authority in the Iranian theocracy—in a missile strike. Moreover, Russia’s GLONASS-K satellite series, first launched in 2011 is outdated and due for replacement by the GLONASS-K2 series, an upgrade that began in 2023 and is still in progress. This task may be slowed by Ukrainian forces, who claim to have hacked into the GLONASS system to interfere with its functions, and have also targeted GLONASS receiver factories with military strikes during their ongoing war with Russia. Countries that have adopted the use of competing satellite systems clearly remain vulnerable to advanced electronic warfare practised by the US and other potential adversaries. This not only raises questions about the strategic wisdom of purchasing Russian military equipment at high cost. It also highlights the improbability that Myanmar generals’ embrace of Russian satellite technology is based on its capacity to compete with foreign forces using GPS or other rival systems. However, Min Aung Hlaing knows first-hand how technology can strengthen his forces’ combat capabilities. The Myanmar air force’s bombing raids, targeting armed resistance groups inside Myanmar, have become more precise since the 2021 coup and during the ensuing civil war. Since losing swaths of territory to anti-junta armed groups starting in 2023, the military has come to rely more on high-powered drones purchased from abroad to recover the captured ground. Regardless of the military’s capacity to defend against threats from abroad, the GLONASS ground station will allow for even more precise operations against resistance forces once it is completed. The Myanmar junta’s adoption of GLONASS and plan to host one of its ground stations is consistent with their aim from the beginning: not security against foreign threats, but more effective suppression of resistance from opponents within Myanmar.

Plans for satellite ground station reinforce Myanmar regime’s ties to Russia

While unlikely to shield the Myanmar regime from external threats, Russian-designed technology will continue to serve as an effective weapon against resistance forces inside the country

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