Ukraine attacks the cosmodrome from which Russia launches Rassvet satellites
Ukraine attacks the cosmodrome from which Russia launches Rassvet satellites
The taiga forests of Russia’s Arkhangelsk region stretch across hundreds of miles of pine, bog, and silence. Deep within this northern expanse, far above the typical reach of frontline combat, lies the Plesetsk Cosmodrome—the primary engine of Moscow’s military space program.
For decades, Plesetsk operated in absolute geographical isolation. It is the launch site for the heavy-lift Soyuz-2 and Angara vehicles responsible for carrying Russia’s most sensitive defense hardware into orbit. But in late August 2026, four long-range Ukrainian strike drones were spotted tracking north past Kargopol, cutting straight through Arkhangelsk airspace toward the launch complexes. It marked the first documented long-range aerial attack against the northern spaceport.
The strike on Plesetsk followed a heavy long-range raid on August 15th, when Ukrainian forces deployed FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles against the Progress Rocket and Space Center in Samara—the sole facility responsible for final assembly of the Soyuz-2 launch vehicles. Satellite verification confirmed the destruction of the plant’s core assembly complex.
At the heart of these coordinated long-range strikes is a systematic campaign against Rassvet, Moscow’s state-controlled low-Earth-orbit satellite network. Designed as a direct counterpart to Western satellite communications networks like Starlink, Rassvet was structured to provide high-speed orbital relay for Russian frontline units, drone operators, and command structures.
The initial batch of sixteen Rassvet satellites reached orbit in March 2026, followed by additional deployments in July. Russian defense strategy called for two hundred and fifty satellites in orbit by 2027 to establish commercial and operational viability, scaling toward a full constellation of three hundred and fifty units.
While Rassvet coverage across the Ukrainian theater remained intermittent through mid-2026, expansion of the constellation promised to eliminate coverage gaps, enabling seamless command coordination and unjammable data links for Russian forces on the ground.
By striking both the manufacturing node at Progress in Samara and the primary launch facilities at Plesetsk, long-range Ukrainian strike operations moved upstream—aiming to dismantle the orbital communication infrastructure on the ground before it could achieve continuous coverage over the battlefield.
