Ukraine has struck deep inside Russia, targeting the Dubna Space Communications Center—a critical hub for military communications, satellite operations, and Kremlin propaganda. This attack could disrupt Russian command networks, drone coordination, and information warfare while exposing vulnerabilities in Moscow's air defenses. In this video, we break down why Dubna matters, what Ukraine may have achieved, and how this strike could impact the battlefield and Russia's wider war effort.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Ukraine Drone Strike Hits Russia Dubna Space Center
01:51 - Russia Dubna Satellite Hub From 2 to 20 Antennas
05:30 - Ukraine Drone Attack Hits Crimea Ferries and Logistics Nodes
07:23 - Moscow Air Defenses Fail Against Ukraine 80 Drone Attack
10:04 - Russian Electronic Warfare Systems Disrupted by Satellite Strike
14:08 - Is Russia Propaganda Network Destroyed by Ukraine Drone Strikes?
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SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/FwFTCfUw
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Ukraine Drone Strike Hits Russia Dubna Space Center
01:51 - Russia Dubna Satellite Hub From 2 to 20 Antennas
05:30 - Ukraine Drone Attack Hits Crimea Ferries and Logistics Nodes
07:23 - Moscow Air Defenses Fail Against Ukraine 80 Drone Attack
10:04 - Russian Electronic Warfare Systems Disrupted by Satellite Strike
14:08 - Is Russia Propaganda Network Destroyed by Ukraine Drone Strikes?
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/FwFTCfUw
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NewsTranscript
00:00Fighting a war isn't just about manpower and metal on the front.
00:04Behind the scenes lie the brains, the hubs that control propaganda and keep an entire military ticking.
00:11That is what the Dubna Space Communications Center is to Russia.
00:14Located in the Moscow region, this center is a key hub for everything from command and control centers on the
00:20front
00:20to the propaganda-laden messages that the Kremlin pumps into the eyes and ears of people inside Russia and occupied
00:27Ukraine.
00:27Dubna is key to the Russian war machine. Ukraine just lobotomized it.
00:33Putin and his cronies are scrambling as the smoke rises and a satellite hub burns.
00:39Confirmation of Ukraine's strike came on June 22nd as Ukraine's general staff confirmed
00:44that it had launched an assault on the Dubna Space Communications Center on June 21st and overnight into June 22nd.
00:51This is Ukraine breaching Moscow's air defenses again,
00:55and it just did it to take out a key target that nobody in the Kremlin would have seen coming.
01:00In a telegram post, the general staff shared a picture of a thick, black plume of smoke rising from the
01:06Dubna center,
01:07along with a message confirming what Ukrainian forces had just carried out.
01:10The Space Communications Center Dubna in the Moscow region was hit.
01:14Large-scale smoke is observed at the facility.
01:17The enemy's losses are being specified, the general staff reported.
01:21More information has come from open-source reporters on the ground.
01:24The OSINT Intuit X account has released more imagery of the strike,
01:28along with a short video showcasing the plume of smoke rising.
01:32In the background, we appear to hear the sound of air defenses attempting to stop the weapons that Ukraine sent.
01:37They clearly failed.
01:38A key satellite station wouldn't be smoking if they had succeeded.
01:41What Ukraine has just achieved here is a massive blow to both Russia's frontline forces
01:47and the Kremlin's attempt to poison the minds of the people with its narrative.
01:51And to understand why, we need to explore the Dubna center a little deeper.
01:55The facility actually has quite an interesting history,
01:58and once upon a time, it served a relatively benign purpose.
02:02United24 media says that Dubna is considered to be one of Russia's largest satellite teleports,
02:08which are ground-based hubs that are used to connect satellites with terrestrial communications networks.
02:13Essentially, these hubs are needed to ensure that satellite TVs work,
02:17and that's what Dubna was initially built to do.
02:20Established in 1980 by the Soviet Communications Ministry,
02:24Dubna was built ahead of the Moscow Summer Olympics to broadcast live footage of the games
02:29to television stations in both Europe and the Americas.
02:32There's a sad irony here.
02:33The Olympics bring people of all nations together to compete in friendly competition
02:38with no politics or hatred involved.
02:40At least, that's the spirit of the games, if not always how it goes down in execution.
02:45Dubna could and should have been a tool that Russia could use to foster togetherness and greater communication.
02:50But like so much in Russia, especially upon the rise of Vladimir Putin,
02:54it has been perverted to serve a military purpose.
02:57That perversion began soon after the Olympics ended,
03:00though it wasn't necessarily a bad thing at the time.
03:03As the Soviet Union was entering its final decade of existence,
03:07the Kremlin used Dubna to host secure communication channels with several Western powers.
03:12Negotiations would have been powered by this satellite hub,
03:14and it may well have played a role in helping post-Soviet Russia to build relationships with other powers.
03:19Over time, the hub has grown larger.
03:22Initially, it had a pair of large antennas.
03:24Now, Dubna has over 20 antennas of different sizes,
03:27which are used to handle the tracking, telemetry, and command operations for a large part of Russia's 300-strong satellite
03:34network.
03:35That sheer size means that Dubna sees inevitable use by the Russian military.
03:39And that's what we're seeing today.
03:42Though operated by the Russian satellite communications company,
03:44which is ostensibly a civilian enterprise,
03:47Dubna is used by the Russian military.
03:49It's tied into both Russia's strategic intelligence and national defense networks.
03:53In occupied Ukraine, it's centers like Dubna that enable many of Russia's command and control centers to operate.
03:59This satellite hub plays a key role in enabling Russia to use drones and electronic warfare, or EW, systems.
04:06And it does all of this while still serving its original purpose of ensuring television stations can broadcast to as
04:12many people as possible.
04:13Only now, those broadcasts are laced with Kremlin propaganda.
04:17And they're being beamed to people all over Russia and occupied Ukraine.
04:22All of this marks Dubna as a dual-use facility for Russia,
04:25and that made it a legitimate military target for Ukraine.
04:29Now, smoke is rising from Russia's satellite station.
04:32Listen, the full damage is still being assessed, as Ukraine's general staff pointed out.
04:36We don't know how many casualties were caused by this strike, if any.
04:40We also don't know specifically what Ukraine has managed to hit at the satellite center.
04:44It could be an antenna or two, or it could be the entire power base of the station itself.
04:48More will come from Ukraine over time.
04:51However, Russia has been surprisingly vocal about this most recent strike.
04:55Reuters reports that the Russian news agency TASS has provided a surprising amount of information
05:00for a state-run service that usually tries to keep news of Ukraine's strikes as quiet as possible.
05:06TASS reported that Dubna had come under a massive drone attack by the Ukrainian armed forces.
05:11It also claimed that television services hadn't been disrupted by this strike,
05:15though how true that is, given the source, is anybody's guess.
05:18TASS also claims that no staff at the center were injured by Ukraine's attack.
05:22So Russia is acting like it's business as usual at Dubna.
05:25But the pictures and videos of the smoke rising tell a very different story.
05:29Dubna was hit, and that means it can be hit again.
05:33If you've been keeping up with our reports of Ukraine's strikes,
05:35you'll know that there's a certain pattern in play.
05:38Ukraine rarely attacks just one target.
05:40When Ukraine's drones fly, they head to targets all over Russia and the occupied territories,
05:45and that's exactly what happened on June 21st into 22nd.
05:49As News Sky points out, Ukrainian forces also attacked several logistical and drone hubs
05:55at the same time as the drones headed toward Dubna.
05:57In the Zaporizhia region, Ukraine's drones attacked a road bridge near Vasilivka as part
06:03of its ongoing campaign to isolate Crimea.
06:06Traffic on that bridge has been suspended.
06:09That attack was accompanied by a strike against Port Kavkaz, which is in Russia's Krasnodar region.
06:14Ukraine hit a pair of ferries, both of which were used to carry supplies and military equipment.
06:18Again, Crimea was the ultimate target.
06:21These strikes are being carried out against nodes along the Kerch Strait, which Russian often uses
06:25to bypass the Kerch bridge to get supplies in and out of Crimea.
06:30Beyond that, Ukraine also targeted drone control points, a drone operator training range,
06:35and several command and observation points in the occupied territories and Russia's Belgorod region.
06:40The latter are used to coordinate Russian strikes against Ukraine's Sumy and Kharkiv regions,
06:45News Sky reports.
06:46So, June 21st was a busy day for Ukraine.
06:50But for as impressive as all of these other strikes were,
06:53especially those that continue the isolation campaign against Crimea,
06:56it's Dubna that grabs all of the headlines.
06:58For now, we'll operate under the assumption that Ukraine has done enough damage to shut Dubna down,
07:04if only temporarily.
07:05That leads us to the obvious question, what does all of this mean for the Ukraine war?
07:10Before we answer that question, this is a quick reminder that you're watching The Military Show.
07:14If you like what you see from the channel, then make sure you hit subscribe.
07:17We post videos like this every single day.
07:21Now, here's what hitting Dubna means for both Ukraine and Russia.
07:24We'll start with the message that Ukraine just sent.
07:27The Dubna satellite center is in the Moscow oblast.
07:30It's supposed to be untouchable.
07:32Surrounded by air defenses like everything else in Moscow and hundreds of kilometers away from the front lines,
07:37Dubna is supposed to be the sort of target that could never in a million years be hit by a
07:42drone.
07:43At least, that's what Putin thought when he started his full-scale invasion in February 2022.
07:48And back then, Putin was right.
07:50Ukraine didn't have the tools it needed to carry out a strike like this.
07:53But this is 2026, and Ukraine not only has the tools,
07:57it's shown that it can consistently hit Moscow,
08:00and there's not much that Russian air defenses can do about it.
08:03The Dubna strike caused plenty of chaos beyond the smoke billowing out of Russia's satellite hub.
08:08The New Voice of Ukraine reports that Russia's beleaguered mayor, Sergei Sobyanin,
08:12claims that Russia's air defenses shot down almost 80 drones during the attack,
08:16and that the strike caused a total of 367 flights to be cancelled or delayed at Moscow's various airports.
08:23We say beleaguered because Sobyanin has been forced to spend far too much time talking about Ukrainian drones,
08:29and far too little time enjoying his life as a Putin crony in recent weeks.
08:33The Dubna strike was just the latest in several examples of Ukraine's drones hitting the Moscow blast.
08:39Less than a week before, on the night of June 17th into 18th,
08:43Ukrainian drones hit Moscow's main oil refinery, Kapotnya,
08:46in what Russian authorities called the largest attack on the region in the past two years.
08:51The strike was effective, Kapotnya burned,
08:54and Muscovites were left complaining about a black oil rain falling on them.
08:57Russia, of course, says that no such rain happened,
09:00but when you see the footage of the strike,
09:02which includes an oil storage tank literally blowing its top,
09:05possibly as a result of a failed Russian air defense missile striking it,
09:09then it's difficult to deny the impact of Ukraine's attack.
09:12Oil rain or not, Ukraine sent a message to Moscow on June 17th,
09:16which it repeated on June 21st,
09:19Moscow isn't just in range, it's an active target.
09:22And that's one of the major points of the Dubna attack.
09:24Regardless of the damage done to Russia's facilities,
09:27Ukraine is using these attacks to let Muscovites know
09:30that Putin can't protect their territory.
09:33The single most protected oblast in all of Russia
09:36has been hit hard twice in the space of a week,
09:39and damage has been done.
09:41Psychologically, that's a killer for Russia.
09:43Propaganda can't pretend everything is okay
09:45when residents of Moscow can see the smoke rising from oil refineries and satellite hubs.
09:50That smoke shows them that all of Ukraine's talk about having weapons
09:53that can strike targets up to 3,000 kilometers away isn't just bluster,
09:58it's very real, and Ukraine keeps on proving it.
10:01Speaking of propaganda,
10:03we'll be coming back to what the Dubna strike could mean on that front in a few minutes.
10:06First, there are the military implications of this strike to consider.
10:10Command posts, drone centers, and electronic warfare systems,
10:14all are reliant on Dubna working at full capacity,
10:16which means that the loss of this satellite hub could have a crippling impact
10:20on Russia's forces in the occupied territories and on the front lines of Ukraine.
10:25Remember what we mentioned about Dubna's many uses earlier.
10:28After the Olympics, Russia used the satellite to open up secure channels
10:32of communications with other countries.
10:34It's a fair assumption to make that command and control centers inside Ukraine
10:37are taking advantage of similar channels,
10:40especially now that Dubna has grown to the size that it has.
10:43Losing secure communications is bad for Russia.
10:46The same goes for losing the ability to collect data that Dubna provides.
10:50A command and control center is essentially a facility that a military uses to monitor,
10:55analyze, and manage critical systems,
10:57which means that each one serves as a central location
11:00from which commanders can direct troops and coordinate assaults on the front.
11:04To do that, communication has to be encrypted to ensure the enemy can't intercept messages,
11:09and the flow of data into the command and control center has to be uninterrupted
11:13to provide a commander with the best possible overview of the battlefield.
11:17If Dubna goes down, which may well happen following repeated strikes now that Ukraine
11:21has established that it can hit the satellite hub,
11:23then there will be absolute chaos in the Russian ranks.
11:26Frontline assaults would suffer most,
11:28and this would inevitably lead to more Russian casualties in a war that has already cost the country
11:33over 1.39 million people.
11:35Then there are the drones.
11:37Losing satellite-based communication between Moscow and command nodes inside Ukraine also means
11:43that commanders can't accurately instruct their drone units because they're not receiving orders.
11:48It's possible that Dubna also plays a role in aiding the satellite navigation
11:51built into many of Russia's strike drones.
11:54New Sky says that Dubna is
11:56critical for controlling unmanned aerial vehicles,
11:59so these are reasonable assumptions to make.
12:00As much has been made about Ukraine and its brilliant drone strategy against Russia,
12:04we can't ignore the fact that Russia makes heavy use of drones.
12:07In May alone, Russia launched a record-breaking 8,150 drones at Ukraine,
12:12which shows you the sheer volume of its long-range campaign.
12:16And according to the Moscow Times,
12:18Russia is planning on building 7.3 million FPV drones in 2026,
12:22which amounts to about 20,000 units per day.
12:25Make no mistake, Russian drones are a major threat to Ukraine.
12:29If Dubna has been shut down, even temporarily,
12:32then it means relief for Ukrainian troops and civilians.
12:35Russian drone units on the front will be forced to delay their strikes,
12:38especially if they're not getting information from command and control centers.
12:41And Russia's strike drones, which rely on satellite navigation to reach their targets,
12:46either won't be able to fly or will be much easier to intercept
12:49using air defenses and electronic warfare techniques.
12:51And speaking of EW, News Sky says that Dubna is also vital to Russia's use of these systems inside Ukraine.
12:58These types of systems typically work by jamming the satellite signals that an opposing system,
13:03such as a drone or missile, is using.
13:05For that to happen, Russia needs access to its satellite network to send the jamming signals.
13:10In particular, Russia wants to use downlink jamming,
13:13which the Modern War Institute at West Point says involves disrupting a satellite signal
13:17as it's on its way down to its receiver.
13:19Presumably, if News Sky is correct,
13:21Dubna is enabling Russia's EW systems to conduct this kind of jamming.
13:25If Dubna is down, that won't happen.
13:28And that means Ukraine's mid-range drones in particular become a lot more lethal.
13:32Those drones are already engaged in Ukraine's logistics lockdown campaign,
13:36which has been designed to shatter Russian logistics in the near rear.
13:39According to RBC Ukraine, the French open-source intelligence analyst Clement Molin
13:44verified at least 500 of these types of strikes against Russian trucks and transport vehicles alone
13:50between May 1st and June 18th, all of which were confirmed using video evidence.
13:55Russia losing its EW systems means that more strikes like this will happen,
13:59which all feeds into Ukraine's ultimate goals of isolating Crimea
14:03and disrupting supplies to the front lines.
14:05All of this shows us that Dubna was a clear military target for Ukraine.
14:09But now let's focus on something a little more insidious.
14:13You may remember that we mentioned that Dubna is a key satellite hub for Russia's state-controlled TV.
14:18That essentially makes it an indirect spreader of the Kremlin's propaganda throughout Russia.
14:24State-controlled television exists to control the narrative, at least in Putin's eyes.
14:29We've seen the evidence of that in Russia even before Putin became president.
14:32For example, the attempted coup of Russia in 1993 led to a brutal battle over control of the Channel 1
14:38station in Ostankino,
14:40which is Moscow's television center.
14:42Those attempting the coup then knew what Putin knows now.
14:46Controlling the airwaves means controlling minds.
14:48A report published by Marlborough College says that the average Russian watches around four hours of television per day,
14:54and Putin has been taking advantage of that fact to use Russian state TV to normalize the war in his
15:00own country.
15:01None of this is surprising.
15:02We all know that disinformation is one of the most important weapons in the Kremlin's arsenal.
15:07But what is far more worrying for Ukraine is that Russia's propaganda-laden programming is being beamed into the occupied
15:13territory.
15:14That's been happening since the early months of the war.
15:17In December 2022, a BBC monitoring analysis revealed that Russia had either tried to force existing channels to report its
15:24version of the news,
15:25or simply created new channels of its own in Zaporizhia and Kherson.
15:29Russia has also used the TRK-Krim regional state media company that Russia set up in occupied Crimea
15:36to create programming that it deemed suitable for those in other occupied territories.
15:40In June 2025, the Kyiv Independent reported that Russia had removed over 1,000 pieces of equipment
15:46that provide access to Ukrainian television in the occupied territories in just a single week,
15:52with the goal being to poison the information space with more propaganda.
15:55Russia has even launched TV packages, such as Rusky Mir,
15:59which the outlet says includes 20 Kremlin-run state TV channels,
16:03along with 11 entertainment channels and 10 regional channels in the occupied oblasts of Ukraine.
16:08What all of this shows us is that Russia isn't just attempting to destroy Ukraine's military.
16:14Putin is taking aim at the cultural backbone of the country.
16:17Using television, the Kremlin is trying to russify the occupied territories by pumping them so full of manipulated information
16:23that those who still live there start to believe Russia's version of events.
16:27But this approach mostly relies on satellite channels.
16:30Any disruption, such as what happened at Dubna,
16:33could break the attempts that the Kremlin is making at reprogramming the minds of those in the occupied territories.
16:38That, perhaps even more than the military aspects of the June 21st strike,
16:42may be the biggest victory that Ukraine achieves with Dubna.
16:45Now that Ukraine knows that it can hit the satellite hub, it will almost inevitably try again.
16:50And with follow-up strikes, we may see a lot more than smoke and unconfirmed reports of damage.
16:55We may well see the destruction of Russia's entire propaganda network inside Ukraine.
17:00Having said all of that, the loss of EW systems is very damaging to Russia.
17:04Taking out Dubna can make those systems useless,
17:06and we already know what the impact of Russian air defense techniques failing can have.
17:10Ukraine's strike against the Amiensk crossing that Russia is trying to use to feed Crimea shows us that.
17:16In a matter of minutes, Ukraine's drones destroyed 50 vehicles on that crossing,
17:20and EW wasn't able to stop them.
17:22Find out more by watching our video,
17:24and remember to subscribe to The Military Show if you want to see more coverage like this.
17:29And thank you for watching.
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