[dead]

I share your pessimism that it did happen accidentally, especially in consideration of Russia's new belligerence and their use of cyber attacks against Georgia.

I have trouble believing that Russia could pull this off on purpose, from a technical perspective.

Plus, the risk of a series of chain reaction collisions destroying basically all low earth orbit satellites would seem to me a reason that Russia would not do this even if they could.

If we had to start the satellite competion again from scratch, Russia would have no chance of keeping up with the US or China.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

I dunno...traditionally, Russian physicists, mathematicians, engineers have always been some of the best in the world, going all the way back to the 19th century.

[r9etb]

If we had to start the satellite competion again from scratch, Russia would have no chance of keeping up with the US or China.

You're wrong there. Even now, the Russians have by far the greatest space launch capacity of any space-faring nation.