Calling Roscosmos a civilian space agency is a category error, and it keeps producing bad analysis. The relevant question is not the agency badge but what the object does for the Russian military machine.
The Military Core of Roscosmos
Igal Levin is right to call it out. Satellite communications, reconnaissance, observation, navigation, and data relay are core military functions now. A chunk of Roscosmos enterprises and systems is directly tied to Russian defense tasks.
Pretend otherwise and you end up surprised when a "civilian" launch site turns out to be feeding targeting data to missile units.
Decline and Military Priority
The numbers tell the story of decline, but also of priority. In 2025 Russia managed only 17 orbital launches. That is pathetic for a program that once sold itself as a superpower capability. And part of those launches went up from Plesetsk, the military cosmodrome, in the interests of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
So even in a year of collapse, the military share held. The program is in serious trouble: a defense infrastructure rationing its remaining capacity.
Ukraine's Strikes on Space Infrastructure
Ukraine has been treating it accordingly. In 2026 the strikes landed on space-related targets with real military function.
- June 26: General Staff reported a hit on the Russian Armed Forces space communications center near Beloomut in Moscow Oblast.
- July 1: Penza Research Institute of Physical Measurements, producer of components for Kh-101 and Kalibr missiles, aviation systems, and military space hardware.
- August 15: Progress Rocket and Space Center in Samara, manufacturer of Soyuz-family launch vehicles used across civilian, state, and military programs.
The Progress strike matters beyond symbolism. That plant builds Soyuz-2.1b rockets, the same ones Russia uses to orbit its RAZ-Svet satellite constellation, their attempt at a Starlink equivalent. Damage to the assembly and testing base there slows deployment of that network. And the OSINT from Cyberboroshno pointing to building 106A, where control systems, cable networks, and instrument compartments are assembled, suggests the hit landed on the nervous system of the production line, not some warehouse.
Function Over Label
InformNapalm already established the pattern with the Gonets satellite system. Internal documents showed its information infrastructure was adapted specifically for reporting under state defense procurement contracts for the Russian Ministry of Defense. So the formal label, Roscosmos, civilian, state corporation, means nothing.
A satellite relay that moves artillery coordinates is a military target even if it wears a Roscosmos logo.
The correct OSINT framework is that one: not the agency badge, but the function. A research institute that builds guidance components for Kalibr is a military target even if it files paperwork as a scientific institution. The sooner Western analysts internalize that, the sooner they stop treating Russian space infrastructure as some protected civilian sphere and start seeing it as part of the kill chain.