There was a recent statement out of Russia, to the effect that "...we had a laser cannon before the Americans."
Assuming they had the capability, all the Russians had to do was either raise or lower the orbit of their Cosmos 2215. They might have chosen this particular satellite because its orbit happened to be intersecting with the U.S. Iridium’s orbit directly over Siberia where they could perhaps better monitor the collision. See my post #34 for the graphic.
IRIDIUM 33:
Epoch (UTC): 03:48:05, Thursday, February 12, 2009
Eccentricity: 0.0010587
Inclination: 86.391°
Perigee height: 776 km
Apogee height: 791 km
Right Ascension of ascending node: 120.6806°
Argument of perigee: 81.0572°
Revolutions per day: 14.32479644
Mean anomaly at epoch: 279.1894°
Orbit number at epoch: 59767
http://heavens-above.com/orbit.aspx?satid=24946&lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=CET
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COSMOS 2215:
Epoch (UTC): 02:00:40, Thursday, February 12, 2009
Eccentricity: 0.0024852
Inclination: 74.0399°
Perigee height: 767 km
Apogee height: 803 km
Right Ascension of ascending node: 14.7272°
Argument of perigee: 157.0294°
Revolutions per day: 14.32047327
Mean anomaly at epoch: 203.2039°
Orbit number at epoch: 81778
http://heavens-above.com/orbit.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&alt=0&loc=Unspecified&TZ=CET&satid=22675