Ukraine hits Russian rocket plant as the war reaches orbit

Residents of Samara, on the Volga, first learned of the attack from the blasts and a column of smoke. Social media footage later pinned down the target: the Progress Rocket and Space Centre, maker of Russia's Soyuz-2 rockets. Two Flamingo missiles hit a pair of buildings, including a facility called 106A, a clean room where motherboards for Soyuz launch systems were assembled, according to the Guardian.

That strike stands out even among Ukraine's steady campaign against Russian refineries and industry. The Samara plant builds the rockets that carry Moscow's new Rassvet satellite system, being rushed into service as a replacement for Elon Musk's Starlink, which cut Russia off earlier this year. Ukraine has also hit other Roscosmos sites this year, including the Korolyov complex north of Moscow and a Ukrainian-built radio telescope Russia seized in Crimea.

Russia is not only playing defence in orbit. Moscow has fired its Oreshnik ballistic missile at least three times, a system that climbs into near space before releasing multiple independently targetable warheads originally designed for nuclear use. Meanwhile a Russian satellite, Kosmos 2612, was seen aggressively manoeuvring toward a commercial radar satellite run by Finland's Iceye, which supplies 3D terrain imaging to Ukrainian forces, in what experts called deliberate harassment.

Kyiv is pushing back on several fronts. It has run at least three tests of near-space interceptions and, last month, Ukraine and Denmark's GomSpace launched the Obria Nano, the first test satellite for an independent Ukrainian communications network reportedly envisioned at around 245 satellites. Fedir Venislavskyi, who heads the state security subcommittee of Ukraine's parliamentary defence committee, told the Guardian that a sovereign presence in space is now essential, and admitted funding would be a serious problem given the war's demands.

Experts say the militarisation is already here. Dr Elena Grossfeld of the Swedish Defence University told the Guardian that space warfare was long discussed as the future, but that future has arrived, with Moscow treating offensive space operations as a prelude to wider conflict. Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation pointed to a decade-long shift toward commercial space operations, and said Musk's throttling of Starlink data speeds has pushed countries to hunt for their own alternatives, much as Russia is doing with Rassvet.

Governance has not kept pace. Treaties on space weapons are outdated and hard to enforce, while in September US air force secretary Troy Meink acknowledged for the first time that Washington has deployed on-orbit space control weapons. Russia's toolkit so far includes jamming, laser-dazzling and parking inspector spy satellites near foreign assets. With Russian launch sites now out of range of Ukraine's longest missiles, Kyiv's answer is interception from the edge of the atmosphere, if it can find the money.