Over the weekend, the Ukrainian military struck Russia’s Progress facility. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Flamingo cruise missile damaged the plant, which is operated by the Roscosmos space agency and primarily manufactures electronics. Russian authorities also confirmed the strike, but the extent of the damage is only now becoming clear.
In a statement on X, Zelenskyy described the Progress facility, located about nine hundred kilometres from Ukraine, as “one of Roscosmos’s key sites.” According to the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, the facility manufactures launch vehicles and automated spacecraft.
The key problem facing Russia’s space industry is that neither Soyuz rockets nor Soyuz spacecraft are reusable, unlike the Falcon rockets developed by the US company SpaceX. Roscosmos therefore depends on a steady supply of new launch vehicles to continue conducting launches and missions to the International Space Station. A prolonged disruption to production would effectively cripple Russia’s space transport capabilities. According to Ars Technica, more than 85 per cent of Russian rocket launches since 2020 have used Soyuz-2 rockets.
According to US-based Russian space technology expert Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com, the Progress Rocket and Space Centre is “the principal developer of rockets and spacecraft, including the Soyuz-2 and Soyuz-5 launch vehicles, as well as military satellites”.
Citing the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, The Kyiv Post reported that the centre sustained a “direct hit”, which caused a fire at the facility. Satellite imagery indicates that an 85-by-35-metre section of the building was damaged.
Russian authorities have not yet confirmed which facilities were damaged, but according to Zak, an analysis of the images by the Ukrainian group CyberBoroshno indicates that Building 106A was hit. The building contains a specialised cleanroom used to manufacture avionics. Such spaces must be extremely well sealed and kept free of contaminants to prevent even a speck of dust from entering sensitive equipment. Any disruption could therefore slow the production of electronics for rockets and satellites.
The building in question is adjacent to Building 106B, which is used for rocket assembly. If either building has sustained internal damage, Russia will find it difficult to replace the lost capacity.
The damage to the Progress Rocket and Space Centre is only the latest setback for Roscosmos, which is grappling with funding shortages, technical problems and isolation from international partners as a result of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
In January, Dmitry Baranov, the Roscosmos official responsible for launch systems and a former head of the centre, said that orders for Soyuz spacecraft exceeded actual production capacity by a staggering margin, Zak writes. Between 2027 and 2030, demand could exceed production capacity by thirty to fifty per cent, Baranov added.
Although the consequences of the weekend’s Ukrainian strike have yet to become clear, it could further hamper Russia’s efforts to catch up with and overtake major space powers such as the United States and China. It could also give Ukraine an advantage in the war by disrupting Russia’s military space capabilities and its ability to launch satellites now used for battlefield surveillance.
An article written by Tomáš Karlík (CT), initially published on 19 August 2026, 12:03 (CEST)