Ukraine Targets Russian Rocket Facility In Major Overnight Attack

Ukraine said it struck a major Russian rocket and space facility with domestically produced Flamingo cruise missiles on August 15, as Kyiv continued its campaign of long-range attacks deep inside Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram that the Progress Rocket and Space Center in Russia’s Samara region had been hit. The facility, part of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, produces Soyuz launch vehicles.

Samara Governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev confirmed that an industrial facility in the region had been hit but did not identify it. Ukrainian monitoring channels reported a fire at the Progress facility. The extent of any damage could not be independently verified.

“Today there are new significant results from our long-range strikes,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Flamingo missiles had been used and calling it “a good achievement.”

The attack on Samara came amid a wider wave of Ukrainian strikes across Russia. The country’s Defense Ministry said on August 15 that its forces had intercepted 598 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones overnight in 19 regions as well as in Russian-occupied Crimea and the Black and Azov seas. The attacks disrupted air traffic, prompting temporary restrictions at airports in several Russian cities.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine also struck the Savasleyka military airfield in the Nizhny Novgorod region, where Russian aircraft used to launch missile attacks on Ukraine are based, and an oil facility at Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region. The extent of the damage at the sites was not independently established.

“Our plan of long-range strikes against Russia in response to this war is being implemented, and it is important that Russia’s war potential continues to decrease,” Zelenskyy said.

In recent months, Ukraine has intensified long-range attacks on military and energy infrastructure inside Russia, a campaign Zelenskyy has described as Kyiv’s “long-range sanctions” against Moscow aimed at pushing the Kremlin into negotiations.

Russian authorities reported other attacks on August 15, including one that damaged power infrastructure in the Rostov region. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 15 drones heading toward the capital were shot down. In the Moscow region, authorities said falling drone debris struck a house, injuring a woman and a nine-year-old boy.

Russia, meanwhile, launched 152 attack drones at Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, which said 124 were shot down or otherwise neutralized.

Local authorities said a Russian drone killed a three-month-old child and injured 11 people in Marhanets in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Russian attacks also damaged industrial and civilian infrastructure in the Odesa and Poltava regions.

The attacks come amid a sharp rise in civilian casualties in Ukraine. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in the country said 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 injured in July, making it the deadliest month for civilians since May 2022.

The conflict has also intensified in and around the Black Sea in recent weeks, with both sides targeting ports, vessels and other maritime infrastructure.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on August 14 rejected Ukrainian and Turkish calls for a pause in Black Sea attacks and ruled out reviving the UN- and Turkey-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative, which had allowed Ukraine to export grain safely before Moscow withdrew in 2023.

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, signed a decree imposing sanctions on 13 vessels, 11 Russian citizens, and 28 companies that Ukrainian authorities accuse of involvement in exporting grain from Russian-occupied territory.