Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Ukraine struck Russia's Progress Rocket Space Center in the Samara region with cruise missiles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Ukraine struck Russia's Progress Rocket Space Center in the Samara region with cruise missiles. The Progress Center, located about 900 km from the Ukrainian border, is Russia's main facility for assembling the Soyuz-2 and Soyuz-5 launch vehicles and for producing military satellites. Zelenskyy said the missiles used were of the Flamingo type, a designation he referenced in a post on the social media platform X. There were unconfirmed open-source reports that a missile hit a building containing a clean-room avionics workshop, which Zelenskyy described as part of the center's electronics production. Russia has not yet confirmed which specific structures within the sprawling complex were damaged. The Soyuz-2 rocket, which the center produces, has a low-Earth orbit lift capacity of roughly 8 metric tons and is used for both civilian and military missions, including crewed flights to the International Space Station. A prior shortage of Soyuz rockets had been reported, raising concerns about launch schedules. The extent of the damage and its effect on Russia's launch operations remain undetermined.
- Publisher
- arstechnica
- Reliability
- high
- Published
- 8/16/2026, 10:00:14 AM
- Retrieved
- 8/16/2026, 10:00:14 AM
- Relevance
- 80%
- Confidence
- 85%

