Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Saturday that his country struck the Progress Rocket Space Center deep within Russia using ground-launched cruise missiles.[reference:96]
"In Russia's Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos—the Progress Center, which was involved, among other things, in electronics production—was hit," Zelenskyy said on X. "Flamingo missiles were used. A good achievement."[reference:97]
A Strategic Target
The Progress center, located in Samara about 900 km from the Ukrainian border, is Russia's most important rocket manufacturer.[reference:98] The facility assembles Russia's workhorse Soyuz-2 vehicle, as well as the newer Soyuz-5 rocket, and also builds military satellites.[reference:99]
Russia uses the Soyuz-2 rocket, which has a lift capacity of about 8 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, for a variety of civil and military purposes. It is the principal rocket used for Russia's human spacecraft launches to the International Space Station.[reference:100]
The Attack
Ukraine used the FP-5 "Flamingo" missiles for the attack, which have a range of several thousand kilometers.[reference:101] The "FP" stands for Fire Point, the Ukraine-based defense group that developed the missile.[reference:102] The missile has previously been used to target energy infrastructure, military production facilities, and other strategic targets.[reference:103]
It was not immediately clear which facilities at the sprawling Progress facility were damaged. There were some open-source reports that a missile struck a building that houses a clean room for avionics.[reference:104]
Potential Impact on Russia's Space Program
Any lasting damage to Soyuz rocket production would be crippling for Russia's space programs.[reference:105] Of the more than 120 Russian rocket launches since 2020, more than 85 percent have involved the Soyuz-2 family of rockets.[reference:106] This has become the country's key launch vehicle with the Proton booster aging out, and the newer Angara rockets being slow to reach a decent launch cadence.[reference:107]
Even before the attacks, Russian space officials said demand for Soyuz rockets was exceeding production capacity by as much as 30 to 50 percent for the period from 2027 to 2030.[reference:108]
It seems unlikely that Ukraine sought to target Russia's civilian space infrastructure specifically, but the civil and military space efforts in Russia are closely aligned, making the Progress facility a legitimate military target.[reference:109]