VLADIMIR Putin’s precious rocket and space centre in Russia – where the Kremlin is speculated to be developing its answer to Elon Musk’s Starlink – has been bombed.
Footage circulating on social media shows the TsSKB-Progress complex in the Samara region on fire and a column of smoke rising.
Fire raging at a key Russian rocket plant in the Samara region Credit: East2West
Plumes of smoke rising from the site Credit: East2West
It is the key aerospace enterprise under Roscosmos, behind the Soyuz-2 space rockets and Earth-observation satellites.
Ukrainian open-source group CyberBoroshno said the strike most likely hit Building 106A, where onboard equipment is installed on Soyuz-2 launch vehicles.
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Analysts said: “Building 106A operates under a high cleanroom standard: this is where onboard electrical systems, instruments and printed circuit boards are installed – essentially the launch vehicle’s ‘nervous system’: the control system, cable network and instrumentation compartment.
“Without this stage, the rocket cannot be assembled, even when the body and tanks are ready.”
Ukraine is believed to have unleashed a FP-5 “Flamingo” – a long-range ground-launched cruise missile, which has been developed domestically since last year.
Volodymyr Zelensky boasted about the “new significant results” from the deep strike, which reached almost 600 miles inside Russia, measured from the Ukrainian border.
The Ukrainian President said: “In Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos – the Progress Centre, which was involved, among other things, in electronics production – was hit.
“Flamingo missiles were used. A good achievement.”
