The Pink Thing That Just Destroyed Russia's Space Program

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Become a Member Today and Unlock EXCLUSIVE Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKfak8fBm_Lhy4eX9UKxEpA/join  In a high-impact deep strike roughly 900 kilometers inside Russian territory, Ukraine deployed its indigenous FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles to hit Roscosmos's Progress Rocket Space Center in Samara. As Russia's sole assembly facility for Soyuz-2 launch vehicles, the strike cripples the Kremlin's ability to deploy military satellites and build a domestic Starlink alternative—further stranding frontline forces stripped of reliable satellite communications.  ⏱️ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - FP-5 Flamingo Missiles Strike Roscosmos Progress Center in Samara 01:32 - Destruction of Russia's Sole Soyuz-2 Rocket Assembly Facility 02:52 - Video Proof Shows Progress Electronics Workshop in Flames 04:07 - Specifications of Ukraine's 3,000km Range Flamingo Missile 05:27 - Long-Range Strike Campaign Cuts Off Russian War Machine 06:36 - Samara Strike Cripples Kremlin Plan for Rassvet Satellites 07:55 - Why Russia Needs 15 Soyuz Rockets to Build Starlink Alternative 09:21 - Elon Musk's Starlink Blackout Triggers 50% Loss in Offensive Capacity 10:47 - Ukrainian Forces Liberate 745 Sq Km After Starlink Shutdown 12:13 - Frontline Comms Collapse Drives Russian Daily Losses Past 1,500 13:39 - War Economy Collides With Space Program Funding Shortages 15:05 - Refinery Strikes Deprive Soyuz Launchers of Kerosene Fuel 16:55 - How the Flamingo Strike Ruined Russia's Satellite Network  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/Teb3pCqg

Transcript

00:01When SpaceX declared that Russia could no longer use its illicit Starlink terminals for planning

00:07or conducting strikes against Ukraine, Russia's entire military went into a tailspin. Ground was

00:14lost, soldiers died, and Ukraine gained a massive advantage. Russia has been trying to create its

00:20own version of Starlink ever since, and a Soyuz rocket center deep within its territory was a key

00:26cog in a space program designed to restore connectivity and communication for Russia's

00:31soldiers. You can probably guess what has happened. Ukraine found that Soyuz center,

00:37and it made the facility burn by sending something pink to destroy the Kremlin's dream of creating

00:43its very own Starlink. Today there are new significant results from our deep strikes.

00:48In Russia's Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos, the Progress Center,

00:53which was involved among other things in electronics production, was hit. Ukraine's

00:58President Volodymyr Zelensky declared in an August 15th expost. Zelensky went on to explain that the

01:04something pink that destroyed parts of the facility were FP5 Flamingo missiles which traveled about 900

01:11kilometers from Ukraine's border to strike deep into the heart of Russia. This isn't just about

01:17losing a rocket manufacturer that is vital to Russia's plans to create its own Starlink. What we've just

01:23seen is yet another example among hundreds in 2026 that there is nowhere that Russia can consider

01:29safe from Ukraine and its drones. Specifically, the facility that Ukraine took out is in southwestern

01:36Russia and is used to manufacture the Soyuz 2 launch vehicles that Russia needs to send satellites

01:42supporting its Razvet system into orbit. Take out the rockets and the satellites stay on the ground,

01:48making them absolutely useless to Russia as it scrambles to come up with a Starlink alternative.

01:53To make matters worse for Russia, this Progress Facility is the only one in the entire country

01:59where these Soyuz 2 launchers can be assembled, according to the Telegraph. This means that Russia

02:05now has two races on its hands, one to get the satellites into the air in the first place,

02:10and another to restore its means of launcher production. Russia has already confirmed that the

02:16strike took place, which tells us that it was too big to hide. Granted, Russian officials didn't name

02:22the Progress Facility directly. Samara Regional Governor Vyacheslav Fedoryshev would only say that

02:28an industrial facility had been hit, and Regional Mayor Ivan Moskov claimed that the attack was a

02:33large-scale missile strike, United24 media reports. The same outlet adds that regular people on the ground

02:39have been more revealing. Residents reported loud explosions not long after a missile alert was issued for the

02:45Samara region, and it's likely thanks to some of these residents that we have some of the clearest proof

02:50that Ukraine hit exactly what it was trying to hit as footage. And that footage shows the Progress Facility

02:57in flames. Zelensky shared some of that footage in his ex-post. A 20-second clip shows several angles

03:04of a fire that has climbed so high it can be seen burning from kilometers away. Thick clouds of smoke

03:10blacken the skies, and they're all emanating from the Progress Center. More footage comes from an

03:14interesting source, Denis Stilemer, who is the founder of Firepoint, which builds the pink missiles

03:20that Ukraine used in its Soyuz-busting strike. His footage shows the very beginning of the attack,

03:26showcasing the ground-based launch of the Flamingo missiles that Ukraine used, and offering just the

03:31briefest of windows into a long-range threat against Russia that is no longer emerging and has instead

03:37turned into an everyday problem. The Flamingo missile-drone hybrid isn't just here, it's

03:42hitting Russia hard with increasing regularity. Russia is terrified of this pretty-and-pink weapon,

03:49and it has every reason to be. The Flamingo delivers a long-range capability to Ukraine that it hasn't

03:54had for most of the war. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Flamingo,

04:00which is pink due to a factory error in initial production and has stayed that way as a

04:05little trademark, can travel around 3,000 kilometers and sports a powerful 1,150-kilogram warhead that

04:13is more than capable of wrecking hardened targets and large facilities. Forbes says the missile will

04:19reshape the dynamics of the entire Ukraine war, and you could argue that it's doing just that.

04:24Ukraine knows what it has on its hands, with its pink Punisher here. It has funded production scaling and

04:30its unleashing Flamingo drone missiles at all sorts of important targets inside Russia.

04:34The Progress Center is just one of those targets. There have been many others in 2026.

04:40According to an August 17 United24 media report, Ukraine is now launching Flamingos at Russia at

04:46around twice the pace it was a mere six months ago. Ukraine isn't saying that. Russian media outlets,

04:52including Ogentsvow, have reached that conclusion by tracking Flamingo attacks throughout 2026.

04:57That data only covers Flamingos that Russia claims to have intercepted,

05:01but Russia acts like it intercepts everything, blaming debris for every major strike that's

05:06recorded. Still, the numbers are illuminating. Between February and May, Russia claims to have

05:12intercepted 31 Flamingo drone missiles. Ukraine has ramped up massively since then. The two weeks up to

05:19United24 media's report have seen Russia claim to have shot down 25 Flamingos. Presumably,

05:26the Flamingo that hit the Samara Progress Center is counted in those figures. And the footage shows

05:31us precisely what shot down means to Russia. The Progress strike shows us just how far Ukraine's

05:37ingenious drone tech has come. Evolving from drones used on the front lines as Ukraine relied on Western

05:43weapons for border strikes into a complete suite of long-range weapons that can strike almost anywhere

05:49of importance in Russia. Ukraine's drone innovation has been a momentum shifter,

05:54the Council on Foreign Relations declares. It has opened the door for greater success with strikes

05:59on Russian territory, backed by terrifying levels of firepower as seen in the Flamingo.

06:04Ukraine's drones have been key to retaking control over the Black Sea, implementing a strategy for

06:09Crimea that enables isolation without the sacrifice of soldiers, and showing Russia that safety simply no

06:16longer exists for any of its key facilities. With the Flamingo in play, anything within 3,000 km is a

06:23target, and according to Zelensky, that range will grow up to 10,000 km by 2027. All of this is

06:31in

06:31service of cutting off the legs of the Russian war machine. That's what we've seen in Samara,

06:36symbolically speaking. On the face of it, this is yet another long-range sanction that has been

06:40delivered to place pressure on Putin and his Kremlin cronies. Every time a Flamingo or any of Ukraine's

06:46other long-range assets hits their target, a message is sent to every Russian who hears the

06:51buzz of the drones or feels the heat from the fires. Putin can't protect them. And his failure

06:58to protect Russia itself is the reason why the military is doing so poorly in Ukraine, and why so

07:03many Russian people are being choked in an economic stranglehold of high inflation and interest rates that

07:09make it impossible for them to repay loans. But it goes much deeper than that in Samara.

07:14We touched on it earlier. The progress facility was central to every plan that the Kremlin was

07:19concocting for Ukraine. Russia needs its satellites in the air, desperately. And in a moment we're going

07:25to explain why this Samara strike has utterly destroyed any dream that Russia may have had of

07:30turning the tide in Ukraine. Before we do, this is a reminder that you're watching the military show.

07:35If you haven't subscribed yet, now's the perfect time to hit the button, enable notifications,

07:40and get ready for the daily videos we publish covering the Ukraine war.

07:46We've already touched on the Starlink replacement issue. Russia needs its progress base to build the

07:51launchers that send its Razvet satellites into space. The Samara facility isn't the only link in

07:57that launcher chain, but it is the most important. Components for the Soyuz launchers that Russia needs are

08:03being made all over the country, likely in an attempt to prevent Ukraine from wiping out the

08:07entire supply chain in one strike. However, all of those components converge at a central point.

08:13And that point is the progress facility that Ukraine struck on August 15th.

08:18Think of it like cutting off the head of the Russian chicken. The body may still be able to run

08:22around for a while, but what that body is sending to the heart spurts out into nothingness for as long

08:27as the progress facility is offline. How long that will be is still to be determined. The Telegraph

08:33reports that satellite imagery of the struck site seems to indicate that the onboard electronics

08:37assembly workshop was destroyed. That's painful for Russia. A rocket isn't going very far without

08:43onboard electronics, and it's likely that a whole lot of what was supposed to be loaded into Soyuz

08:47launches has now gone up in smoke, along with the facility that was specially designed for assembling

08:53those electronics. It's going to take time for Russia to rebuild this workshop and replace every

08:58component that it's lost in the massive blaze. How ironic. Satellite imagery has revealed just how

09:04screwed Russia's own satellite project is. To understand how screwed Russia is, you need a

09:10better understanding of what Russia has to achieve to get anything that even remotely resembles its own

09:15version of Starlink up and running. In an August 17th report, RBC Ukraine says that Russia needs to

09:21carry out between 12 and 15 launches of Soyuz carrier rockets into orbit to deploy the Razvet satellite

09:27network. Each Soyuz 2.1b can put 20 satellites into orbit, meaning Russia plans to have up to 300

09:35satellites as part of its constellation. If that doesn't sound like much compared to Starlink, because

09:40it isn't. Satellite Tracker says that Starlink has 10,977 satellites in orbit and that it plans a full

09:48constellation of 42,000. At best, Russia's own version of Starlink is going to be a 36th of the

09:55size of the actual Starlink. Russia might argue that this isn't a problem. It only needs satellite

10:01coverage for Ukraine and perhaps parts of Russia, and not the whole world right now. That may be the

10:06case. But there's also no denying that Russia's plans amount to a shoddy version of a technology that

10:11is lost. A poor copy of the original, which, come to think of it, suits Russia down to the ground.

10:16Ever since the Soviet era, Russia has stolen and copied rather than innovated. It's doing it as we

10:21speak by trying to copy Ukraine's drones, and the Razvet system is just the latest example.

10:27Despite all of this, there's no denying that Razvet is vital for Russia. Getting any satellite

10:32constellation into orbit, even if it isn't a patch on the Starlink system Russia illicitly accessed before,

10:38is better than nothing. That's why Russia has been pouring so many resources into building the new

10:43Soyuz capsules, which are one-way launchers that it can't retrieve or reuse. The faster those

10:49launchers are built, the better Russia's situation in Ukraine. And this is why.

10:54For years, Russia used illegally accessed Starlink terminals for everything from drone attacks to

11:00ensuring fluid communication between frontline units and command centers in the rear. That all ended

11:06at the beginning of 2026, when SpaceX founder Elon Musk cut all access to Starlink for Russia's forces.

11:13It appears that this was done by creating a whitelist of Ukrainian terminals and a blacklist of Russian

11:18terminals, essentially shutting down Russian access practically overnight. The impact was immediate

11:24and pronounced. By February, Russia's battlefield capabilities had declined drastically. As one

11:30Ukrainian drone operator going by the callsign Giovanni told the BBC at the time, the Russians lost their

11:37ability to control the field. I think they lost 50% of their capacity for offense. That's what the

11:42numbers show. Fewer assaults, fewer enemy drones, fewer everything. Russia had had its pants pulled down,

11:48and it started scrambling in desperation, tripping all over itself as it did. The comms blackout caused by

11:54this shutdown was catastrophic for Russia's 2026 plans. The Atlantic Council says that Ukraine

12:00was quickly able to take advantage of Russia's loss of Starlink by launching lightning-fast counterattacks

12:06against weakened fortifications across the front lines. Within the first five days of the shutdown,

12:11the outlet says, Ukraine had liberated about 200 square kilometers of territory, which was roughly

12:17equivalent to what the Russian army had gained during the entire month of December. Just like that,

12:23Russia's forces were being pushed back. And this trend of Ukrainian counterattacks taking advantage of

12:28Russian weakness has continued throughout 2026. Ukraine used Russia's Starlink blackout to push

12:35targeted offensives, primarily taking place in the south of the country. By mid-March, Ukraine had retaken

12:41about 400 square kilometers of territory, much of it in the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

12:47Fast forward to August, and Zelenskyy revealed that Ukraine has also liberated 745 square kilometers of

12:53territory in the Oleksandrovsk sector. Add all of that to the impact that the loss of Starlink had on

12:59Russia's drones, especially in the medium to near ranges, and you get a good picture of just how damaging

13:05the comms chaos caused by Musk's decision has had on Putin's forces. The setup work done for the 2026

13:11offensive unraveled due to Ukraine's counterattacks, and it's not too much of a stretch to say that the

13:16quagmire Russia now finds itself in, as it tries to capture Donetsk, owes a lot to its loss of access

13:22to

13:22Starlink. Russia's desperation to get Razvet up and running is compounded by the sheer number of

13:28casualties the country is being forced to absorb due to its frontline soldiers not being able to

13:33communicate with rear-lying commanders effectively. Daily casualties are far above 1,000 per day,

13:40often hovering closer to the 1,500 mark. That was the case in the 24 hours leading up to August

13:4616th,

13:46when Russia lost 1,510 soldiers to death or injury, along with 600 pieces of equipment. Again,

13:54this can all be traced back to the Starlink shutdown. Casting a wider net on Russian casualties, Russia

14:00lost a 2026 record of 42,860 soldiers in July, giving it a seven-month total of almost 225,500

14:11losses,

14:11the Kyiv Independent reports. Those losses come amidst Ukraine also drastically altering the

14:17casualty ratio to the point where it's now losing around eight soldiers for every one Ukrainian

14:22casualty. The battlefield maths isn't mathing anymore. And again, the loss of Starlink is to blame.

14:28All of this explains why Russia has been so desperately building Soyuz launchers to send

14:33Razvet satellites into space. However, Russia faces another problem that Ukraine's latest Flamingo

14:39strike compounds. It's not just the loss of a key workshop that hurt Russia in Samara.

14:45What Ukraine has also done, even if that workshop is rebuilt, is cause some serious issues for a space

14:51program that is getting deprioritized the longer the Ukraine war lasts. That may seem like a strange

14:58claim to make, especially if you remember that November 4th, 2024, saw Russia launch a record-breaking

15:0453 small satellites into space, using Soyuz 2.1b carrier rockets. That launch would suggest that

15:11Russia's space program is fine and dandy. But looks can be deceiving. There's a good reason why we

15:16haven't seen a launch like that since, even though Russia is more desperate than ever to get its

15:21satellites in orbit. November 2024 was almost two years ago, and a lot has changed in Ukraine.

15:27More Russian equipment has been destroyed, and Ukraine now regularly conducts deep strikes,

15:32all of which are stretching Russia to the point where it's forced to prioritize between war fighting

15:37and its space program. It doesn't matter how quickly Russia can or can't build Soyuz launches,

15:43the war economy has collided with the space economy, and it's the latter that is losing ground.

15:48The priority has become to get whatever is needed to Russian troops in Ukraine, and to replenish those

15:53troops as they are lost in massive numbers, which all means less money can be dedicated to a Razvet program

15:58that will be beneficial to Russia in the long term, but doesn't solve the immediate problems it has

16:04right now. Russia recognizes this as well as anybody. On April 10, United24 media reported that the

16:11scientific director of the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lev Zeleny,

16:17has admitted during a speech at the Russian Space Forum that Russia is a long way behind its competitors

16:21in the space race. The only project it has, beyond Razvet, is the creation of a new Russian orbital

16:27station. No manned deep space or lunar missions are planned for at least a decade. This comment is

16:33revealing. It shows us that money isn't being pumped into Russia's space program, meaning that

16:38even the vital Razvet program is operating on a shoestring budget. The Progress Center going up in flames

16:44isn't going to help. Now, the Kremlin has to make the difficult choice between pouring money it didn't

16:49expect to spend back into progress or using that money to support troops on the front. Either way,

16:55it's the soldiers who lose out. And one more literally combustible element to add to all of

16:59this is Ukraine's refinery strikes. Soyuz launchers need refined kerosene. That fuel is made in oil

17:06refineries, and those refineries have been taking a beating all through 2026. So much so that Russia is

17:12now dealing with shortages in gasoline and diesel. Again, the Kremlin is forced to prioritize. Does it have its

17:19refineries producing fuel to serve the general population, relieving pressure on Putin in the

17:24process? Or do refineries continue making a type of fuel that the Russian people never see in action

17:29and is dedicated to a space program that is already struggling? Another catch-22 choice with no right

17:36answer. And Ukraine never relenting on its refinery strikes isn't going to help. On August 13th,

17:42the new voice of Ukraine reported that Russia's oil refining is likely to drop to 4 million barrels of

17:47oil process daily, all caused by unplanned repairs and outages due to Ukraine's strikes. That may

17:54sound like a lot of refining, but it's actually a load that hasn't been seen since the early 2010s,

17:59and it comes at a time when Russia needs its refineries to be working at maximum capacity

18:04due to the fuel shortages and the Razvet project. Russia will try to push on. It was launching Razvet

18:10satellites much faster than initially planned earlier in 2026, highlighting its desperation to get its

18:16Starlink replacement up and running. 16 satellites went into orbit back in March, and there was

18:21reportedly a second package sent into orbit in July, leading to Russia having about 40 Razvet satellites

18:27in space. It plans for up to 300. Those plans have been ruined. And it's all thanks to the pink

18:32nightmare dressed up as a daydream that has just wrecked the Progress rocket facility in Samara.

18:37This may have been one of Ukraine's smartest strikes yet, as it keeps Russia's ground forces in the

18:42vulnerable position that they've been in since early 2026. But other strikes are just as smart.

18:48Yes, we are talking about the Wildberries attacks, and they are putting pressure on Putin in brand new

18:53ways as the Russian economy creaks under their weight. Another crushing blow has been struck.

18:58More millions, perhaps even billions of dollars have gone up in smoke, and you can find out all about

19:04it by watching our video. But before you go, don't forget to subscribe to The Military Show and enable

19:09notifications so you don't miss our reporting on the latest developments in the Ukraine war.

19:14And thank you for watching.

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