Russia hides Plesetsk launch schedule as Ukrainian drones probe northern spaceport

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov told Vladimir Putin in an April 11 Kremlin meeting that the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, roughly 500 miles north of Moscow, faced ‘serious inbound attempts’ on March 23, the day Russia launched the first 16 operational satellites of its Rassvet broadband constellation aboard a Soyuz-2.1b. The drones did not hit the site, but the acknowledgment is Russia’s first public confirmation that Ukraine is reaching for a strategic military spaceport deep inside its territory.

Rassvet is Russia’s answer to Starlink, developed by Bureau 1440 with more than $1.2 billion in state funding. The constellation matters because Starlink underpins Ukrainian battlefield communications, giving Kyiv an obvious incentive to disrupt deployment of a Russian equivalent before it reaches operational scale. Plesetsk’s role as the launch site puts a previously rear-area facility into the active target set.

Local corroboration came from Mirny, the closest town to the cosmodrome, where officials posted a drone-threat warning covering March 22–25 and residents reported mobile Internet outages framed as ‘temporary restrictions’ for protecting critical infrastructure. Russia has launched only 17 times in 2025, trailing both the US and China, and is now obscuring its launch schedule to reduce the targeting value of advance notice.