On 25.11.2023, Russia launched Cosmos 2572, which is thought to be the first “Razdan” satellite with an optical payload of 1.5 m diameter based on the Resurs-PM satellite. 

They are so-called IMINT (=Imagery Intelligence) satellites. An optical payload means these satellites take images from the earth like a camera – or to be exact like a scanner. But that also means the new satellite is not able to see through clouds like a Radar satellite. However, it might have a “night vision capability”, because most certainly it can also take images in the infrared spectrum, but with a much worse spatial resolution.

With the optical aperture of 1.5 m it is theoretically able to provide images with a 13 cm resolution. That means that one pixel of the image corresponds to 13×13 cm on the real ground. That is a very high resolution for a satellite, however it is much more likely, that the real resolution is more in the range of ~0.2 m – still very high though. But there are some indications, that it could also be a long-delayed Resurs-P satellite with a smaller aperture of 50 cm, which would result in a spatial resolution of about 0.5 m per pixel. A hint for this theory could be the very low orbit of around 315 km, at such a low orbit, the satellite will only endure for 1-5 years, but it would at least achieve the GSD of 0.5 m.

In its current orbit, Razdan can take more or less 20 images per month of the front in Ukraine, but only half of these are daytime images.

Before the “presumable” Razdan satellite, Russias most capable IMINT Satellite was Persona, which is thought to have a spatial resolution of ~0.3 m, which is enough to recognize an aircraft, but not necessarily good enough for an identification (depends on the aircraft).

The new satellite is indeed an improvement of Russias satellite IMINT capabilities, however, compared to the US or China the quality and quantity of Russian IMINT satellites is still quite low.

You can track the overpasses of the new satellite (and all other Russian IMINT satellites) here: guerillamap.com/rus-satellite-tracking