Russia’s Answer to Starlink Is Finally in Orbit but Its First Satellites Are Already Struggling
Russia has launched 32 new satellites this year for a network meant to become its answer to Starlink. So far, not one has reached the altitude its manufacturer advertises for the finished system.
Several appear to have stopped climbing altogether, and at least one has already fallen back into the atmosphere. Others may soon follow.
Yet Russia’s Rassvet network is not a failed imitation of Elon Musk’s satellite internet service either. About a dozen of its satellites have settled into stable lower orbits, enough to create brief periods when Russian forces in Ukraine could potentially connect through space. Meanwhile, Russian engineers have begun testing Rassvet terminals with users on the ground.
Russia accelerated Rassvet after SpaceX blocked unauthorized Russian Starlink terminals in Ukraine in February. This severely disrupted Russian military operations and gave Ukraine a much-needed respite.
However, the gap between the two might not last long. Moscow now wants hundreds of its own satellites overhead, giving it sovereign control over its own 24/7 space-based communication network.
A satellite network that appears and disappears
Bureau 1440, the Russian company building Rassvet, says its finished satellites are supposed to operate about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Earth, offering speeds of up to one gigabit per second and latency below 70 milliseconds. Bureau 1440 is a nominally-private sector satellite communications company in Russia, but it operates with significant integration into Kremlin programs of priority to the state. The project is closely tied to the Russian state through satellite production subsidies and launches organized through the Ministry of Defense space body,
Russia launched its first 16 production satellites in March and another 16 in July aboard Soyuz-2.1b rockets. The rockets released them into much lower initial orbits, from which small electric propulsion systems were supposed to gradually raise them higher.
And that is the part that has not gone according to plan.
About 12 satellites from the March launch have climbed to roughly 500 to 550 kilometers and appear to have stabilized there. One satellite never made a substantial maneuver and reentered the atmosphere in June. Others stopped raising their orbits.
The second group performed even worse. According to an August 31 assessment by the Institute for the Study of War, none of those 16 satellites had reached even the roughly 550-kilometer altitude attained by most of the successful spacecraft from the first batch. Many remained between about 300 and 400 kilometers, while at least two appeared headed toward reentry.
But not every spacecraft needs to head directly to its final orbit. Satellite operators sometimes deliberately leave spacecraft lower for months while their orbital planes gradually drift into the right positions. SpaceX uses similar techniques.
However, satellites that stop maneuvering entirely are a clearer sign of technical failure. The lower they fly, the more strongly the thin upper atmosphere drags on them. Unless they periodically boost themselves, they eventually descend and burn up.
Lower orbits can also improve latency and signal strength. But each satellite covers less territory, so an operator generally needs more of them to provide continuous coverage.
And Rassvet does not have many to spare. All of this points to the idea that the Rassvet network is, so far, off to a rocky start.
Russia is trying to compress years of research
It would be easy to dismiss Rassvet as another troubled Russian space project. But underestimating Bureau 1440’s capabilities and the Russian government’s resolve to have its own Starlink would be a mistake.
The company launched three experimental satellites in 2023 and three more in 2024. During those early missions, engineers tested communication with ground terminals and laser links that allow satellites to pass data directly between one another.
In 2024, Bureau 1440 reported sending more than 200 gigabytes between satellites at 10 gigabits per second during an early laser-link test. It also demonstrated communication between a spacecraft and a ground terminal using technology derived from 5G cellular networks.
The company has now moved beyond laboratory demonstrations. Alexey Shelobkov, chief executive of ICS Holding, told the Russian outlet RBC this week that selected customers had begun testing Rassvet in August. A terminal has also been installed on a Russian Railways train for tests while moving, with the equipment designed to maintain a connection at speeds of up to 400 kilometers per hour.
The hard part is scale.
Ukrainian intelligence says Russia aims to have 292 Rassvet satellites by the end of 2027 and 924 by 2035. That sounds like a lot — until you compare it with Starlink.
As of late August, more than 11,000 functioning Starlink satellites were orbiting Earth, according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell’s tracking data. A Starlink satellite has a lifespan of approximately five years and SpaceX eventually hopes to have as many as 42,000 satellites in this so-called megaconstellation.
SpaceX also stumbled when it started. Three of its first 60 Starlink satellites failed shortly after their 2019 launch. By 2021, SpaceX reported an early mission termination rate of about 3.1 percent for its newer satellites, according to Federal Communications Commission records. SpaceX’s current generation of Starlink Version 2 satellites has a failure rate of just 0.01 percent
Whether Rassvet can overcome these initial deployment problems and reach a minimum failure rate like SpaceX remains to be seen.
Why even 90 minutes of internet matters
For now, Rassvet cannot provide anything resembling continuous Starlink service over Ukraine.
But it does not necessarily need to.
The 12 satellites that successfully climbed into higher orbits appear arranged so that they pass within useful range of Ukraine several times each day. They could provide roughly two reliable communications periods totaling as much as an hour to 90 minutes a day.
During those periods, Russian units with compatible terminals could potentially send large amounts of data without depending on terrestrial cellular networks or radio links that Ukraine can more easily disrupt or intercept.
This would be particularly useful on the front line for remotely operated drones and other unmanned systems, which require reliable connections to send video and receive commands. Satellite links could also connect dispersed units, relay reconnaissance data or maintain communications where terrestrial infrastructure has been destroyed.
There is no public evidence that Rassvet is already supporting such missions at scale. But the possibility worries many defense analysts.
“The existing Rassvet satellite constellation still presents a threat to Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its August 31 assessment, warning that even limited connectivity could support remotely controlled systems and more precise attacks.
Ukraine adopted Starlink rapidly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, using satellite terminals to maintain communications when fiber-optic cables, cell towers and radio systems went down. Russian forces later acquired thousands of Starlink terminals through third-party countries and gray-market suppliers, using it for its own operations.
When SpaceX disabled unregistered Russian terminals in Ukraine in February 2026, Russian forces experienced massive communications disruptions. During the initial shock, the Russian military incurred heavy losses and the Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to make considerable gains.
Ukraine is attacking Rassvet before it reaches space
That is one reason Ukraine has begun treating Russia’s satellite network much like any other military supply chain.
On August 14 and 15, Ukraine said it struck the Progress Space Rocket Center in Samara, which manufactures Soyuz launch vehicles, including the type used for Rassvet missions. Ukrainian forces later attempted to strike the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, the northern Russian launch site used for both Rassvet deployments. The extent of the damage remains unclear.
Even if each future Soyuz carried 16 perfectly functioning satellites, Russia would need roughly 16 additional launches just to approach 300 spacecraft. Soyuz rockets must also launch navigation, reconnaissance, scientific and military payloads unrelated to Rassvet.
This is why Ukraine is going after this bottleneck. Still, Russia shows no sign of abandoning the project, which it views as absolutely critical. Bureau 1440 continues to test terminals, and its successful experimental missions show that the basic communications technology exists. The unresolved question is whether Russia can manufacture, launch and operate it at megaconstellation scale.
Other governments have reached the same conclusion about satellite communications: sovereignty matters, especially when access could become a military vulnerability.
A race to space
China is pursuing that goal on a much larger scale than Russia. It is building two separate Starlink-like constellations. The state-run Guowang, or “National Network,” had put about 195 satellites into orbit by mid-August 2026 and ultimately envisions roughly 13,000. Alongside it, the Shanghai-backed Qianfan, also known internationally as Spacesail or Thousand Sails, had launched 238 satellites by early July and has plans for more than 15,000. Together, the projects would give China a domestically controlled broadband infrastructure numbering in the tens of thousands of satellites, serving civilian communications while also providing the kind of resilient connectivity increasingly important for national security.
Europe is moving in the same direction, although on a smaller scale. EU GOVSATCOM became operational in January 2026, pooling secure satellite capacity contributed initially by France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain and making it available to governments across the bloc for military operations, border surveillance, crisis response and protection of critical infrastructure. It is essentially a bridge between Europe’s existing satellites and a purpose-built sovereign system.
That next system is IRIS². In August, the European Commission expanded the planned constellation from 282 to 348 satellites, including 66 additional low-Earth-orbit spacecraft specifically intended to strengthen defence, security and emergency communications. The first launches are now scheduled for 2029, with the Commission saying the redesign should increase secure governmental communications capacity by about 60 percent within the EU.
The war in Ukraine has turned broadband satellites from an unusual piece of communications infrastructure into something closer to a strategic weapon. Rassvet remains far from becoming Russia’s Starlink. But Moscow does not need to match SpaceX’s 11,000 satellites to change the battlefield situation in Eastern Europe. It needs just a couple hundred satellites, passing overhead often enough, to make Russia less dependent on someone else’s network.
Thirty-two satellites are nowhere near that threshold. They are, however, a worrisome start for Western leaders.
