Russia's Starlink Alternative: HUR Names the 49 Companies Building Rassvet for War

In brief: Ukraine's military intelligence has published the identities of 49 Russian and Belarusian enterprises building Rassvet, the satellite constellation meant to give Moscow its own Starlink, and 23 of them, including Roscosmos, are not sanctioned by any country in the coalition. HUR says the system is being built for war, with subscriber terminals planned for Iskander-M command vehicles, yet not one of its 32 production satellites has reached its target orbit.

Part of our Russia Military Capabilities coverage.

On Wednesday morning, Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence opened the file on Russia's Starlink alternative. HUR published data on 49 Russian and Belarusian enterprises building Rassvet, a low-orbit satellite communications system, on its War&Sanctions portal, and said plainly what the project is for: not rural broadband, but strategic communications, troop command, and the control of strike platforms.

The channel has tracked the satcom war all year, from the February cutoff that left Russian units without Starlink to the throttling of Ukraine's own terminals this month. The HUR disclosure is the clearest picture yet of who is building Moscow's answer, who is paying for it, and how far behind schedule it is.

What Rassvet Is, and Why Russia Needs It

Russia's dependence on satellite internet became a vulnerability in February, when SpaceX disabled Starlink terminals that were not on Ukraine's verified whitelist. The contraband dishes Russian forces had been running went dark. "Complete stupor lasted several days," Mykhailo Trach, commander of the Sapsany unmanned systems battalion of the 30th Mechanized Brigade, said of the Russians opposite him at the time, in remarks carried by ArmyInform.

A Ukrainian serviceman with a Starlink terminal. Russian units lost access to unverified dishes in February 2026. Photo: ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0

Rassvet is the replacement. Developed by Bureau 1440, a private company inside the IT conglomerate IKS Holding, the project has flown test satellites since June 2023, when three experimental Rassvet-1 spacecraft went up. Three Rassvet-2 prototypes followed in May 2024, and that series demonstrated a 10 Gbps inter-satellite laser link and, by June 2024, the first satellite-to-terminal data session over 5G NTN technology, per Militarnyi.

The sales pitch is ambitious: download speeds up to 1 Gbps, latency under 70 milliseconds, and terminals under 15 kilograms with phased-array antennas for vehicles, ships, aircraft, and trains. "Our proprietary satellites act as 5G base stations in orbit," Bureau 1440 says of the design, as quoted by United24 Media.

The 49 Companies Behind Russia's Starlink Alternative

The HUR list covers the whole production chain: IT companies, microelectronics makers, research centers, Roscosmos structures, and entities tied to Russia's Defense Ministry. IKS Holding affiliates supply solar panels, subscriber equipment, circuit boards, and electronic modules. Roscosmos and other aerospace firms handle launch vehicles, upper stages, electric propulsion, and orbital insertion. State-owned VTB, one of Russia's largest banks, is named as an investor that financed development.

The most striking number is the sanctions gap: 23 of the 49 enterprises, including Roscosmos itself, are not under sanctions from any country in the international sanctions coalition, per HUR. The agency said the companies must go on every blacklist "of countries, banks and businesses," with cooperation fully banned. The wider chain is even bigger: the Center for Defense Reforms counted more than 1,300 companies involved, with heavy dependence on imported electronics and Chinese supply channels, as reported by RBC-Ukraine and cited by United24.

The project also has a personal overseer. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov supervises Rassvet directly, per HUR. Before taking over the agency, Bakanov ran the satellite firm Gonets, including during its joint work with Britain's OneWeb on low-orbit services in Russia. The knowledge of how a Western megaconstellation operates now sits at the top of Russia's state space program.

Built for the Iskander, Not for the Internet

Bureau 1440 markets Rassvet as civilian broadband. HUR's assessment is blunter: the system is being created primarily for military operations, for strategic communications, command posts, control of strike platforms, and support for combat drones. Two details stand out. Russia plans to integrate Rassvet satellites into a missile targeting system, and to fit subscriber terminals on the command vehicles of Iskander-M ballistic missile units, the same missiles that have been arriving over Kyiv with almost no interceptions this month.

Satellite image published alongside the Rassvet disclosure. Image: Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR) via ArmyInform

The drone scenario is the one Ukrainian experts watch. Putin claimed in June that Russia already has a low-orbit system for drone operations. Radio technology expert Serhii Beskrestnov has said terminals could in theory go on Shahed-type drones with attacks timed to satellite passes, though he saw no signs of it yet and estimated Russia would need roughly 200 to 250 satellites to make it work, per United24. For now the windows are thin: the satellites pass over Ukraine about four times a day, with only two passes stable enough for a connection, lasting an hour to ninety minutes, per United24.

Coverage priorities make the intent explicit. Planned coverage focuses on Ukraine and the EU first, per HUR, which warned the system could also support hybrid operations against other countries once the constellation is dense enough.

A Constellation That Cannot Climb

The gap between ambition and orbit is wide. The first 16 production satellites launched on March 23, and one was lost. A second batch of 16 followed from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in July. As of October, none of the 32 has reached its designated 800-kilometer orbit, per United24, and orbital tracking data from October 13 showed two of the July satellites stuck near 250 kilometers and losing altitude, with reentry possible in late October or early November.

A Soyuz launch at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, March 2016. Rassvet's production batches fly from Plesetsk. Photo: Mil.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

The schedule math is brutal. Russia's plan called for 156 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026 and roughly 290 before commercial service begins in 2027, per United24, on the way to more than 900 by 2035, a figure Roscosmos chief Bakanov has given publicly, per The Moscow Times. Hitting this year's target would require seven more launches and 125 satellites in two months. United24's investigation found the chokepoint: every Soyuz-2.1b launch needs an RD-0124 third-stage engine, built in small batches by a single plant, the Chemical Automatics Design Bureau in Voronezh, which also feeds the Angara program. Ukraine sanctions the plant. The EU, US, and UK do not.

The money is real even if the orbits are not. The state allocated 102.8 billion rubles, about 1.26 billion dollars, and Bureau 1440 plans to invest another 329 billion rubles of its own through 2030, per The Moscow Times.

Why It Matters

The war's communications layer is being rebuilt on both sides at once. Ukraine spent October discovering how much leverage sits in someone else's constellation, when Starshield speed caps and missing missile warnings arrived mid-barrage. Russia was locked out of Starlink in February and is spending billions to never be locked out again. Its digital infrastructure is already a target set, from the Yandex data center attacks to the cloud outages that followed, and a sovereign military constellation would change the drone war, because a drone that talks to orbit does not care about ground-based jamming.

Ukraine is running the same race at smaller scale. Its first test satellite for an independent national network, built by Ukrainian firm Himera with Denmark's GomSpace, reached orbit on October 1 aboard a SpaceX rideshare and is already operating, a fact disclosed only on Tuesday, per Kyiv Post. And the sanctions gap is the cheap lever: Zelensky has already urged Washington to sanction the Russian and Chinese companies in the Rassvet chain, per the Financial Times.

What to Watch

Watch the reentry window first: if the two decaying satellites come down within weeks, it confirms the quality problems independent trackers suspect. Watch whether the coalition moves on the 23 unsanctioned enterprises, Roscosmos and the Voronezh engine plant above all. Watch Plesetsk's launch cadence against the 156-satellite target. And watch for the first Rassvet terminal pulled from a downed drone or captured command vehicle, the moment this stops being a program and becomes a battlefield fact.

The channel will keep tracking the satcom war as it develops. For the live feed, follow t.me/TheLeaflet.

Read next: Ukraine Starlink Restrictions: Missing Missile Warnings, 39 Ballistic Missiles, and a Ceasefire in Name Only and Yandex Data Center Attacks: Three Strikes in Four Days Took Russia's Cloud Offline.

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Reader question: if Rassvet ever reaches 250 satellites, what should Ukraine and its partners go after first, the launch chain, the ground stations, or the satellites themselves? Drop your take in the comments, or tell the channel what to cover next.

Sources

HUR War&Sanctions via ArmyInform (Oct 28, 2026), Kyiv Independent (Oct 28, 2026), United24 Media (Oct 28, Oct 21, and Aug 6, 2026), Militarnyi (Jul 21, 2026), The Moscow Times (Mar 24, 2026), Mezha (Oct 1, 2026), Kyiv Post (Oct 27, 2026), ArmyInform (Feb 6 and Feb 15, 2026). Photos: Ukrainian serviceman with a Starlink terminal, ArmyInform, CC BY 4.0; Soyuz launch at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Mil.ru via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0; satellite image, Defence Intelligence of Ukraine via ArmyInform.