As pointed out by HorusKol, a high density of debris is visible at a distance of no more than 2000 km from the surface. So the debris is probably in low Earth orbit and is certainly not near geostationary orbit. However, this doesn't make the situation depicted impossible (although the density of junk depicted in the first image might be). Given that orbits that slowly decay on any timescale can be constructed, we can construct an explanation of the debris field depicted. Maybe there were several large space stations whose orbit has been decaying over the past 500 years and started a Kessler syndrome event in the last few decades.
To expand on Oni's answer, in much higher orbits, including geostationary orbit, objects can stay in orbit for millions or billions of years. As you get farther from the Earth, the atmosphere becomes exponentially thinner, to the point that particles coming from the Sun are more common than Earth-bound air molecules.
In higher orbits particularly out towards sort of 36 000 kilometres – what we’d call a geostationary orbit – in principle, they could stay up there forever. The orbit will tend to shift over time but it will stay orbiting the Earth in the same way that the Moon still orbits the Earth after millions of years. New Zealand Government Science Learning Hub