Russia’s planned deployment of the Rassvet low-Earth-orbit satellite network could have serious consequences for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Sergey Beskrestnov, an external adviser to Vladimir Zelensky on communications and unmanned systems who uses the call sign Flash, said the full-scale launch of the constellation would amount to a small catastrophe for the Ukrainian military.
Beskrestnov said he was sounding the alarm over the threat and urged Kiev to begin work on an electronic warfare system capable of countering it. He also warned that developing such measures would require substantial spending and could not be done quickly.
Rassvet was developed by the private Russian aerospace company Bureau 1440, founded in Moscow in December 2020 and part of X Holding. The project is designed to create a low-orbit satellite network capable of providing broadband data transmission across different parts of the planet.
The system is being developed under the national project «Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the State,» which covers the 2025–2030 period.
Bureau 1440 sent the first 16 satellites of the future constellation into orbit in late March. The spacecraft are based on the company’s own platform and carry a 5G NTN communications system, an upgraded power supply system, next-generation laser terminals for intersatellite links and a plasma propulsion unit.
Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov has described Rassvet as Russia’s answer to the US Starlink satellite system.