The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Ukraine's Flamingos Crush Russia's Space Program || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Ukraine sent a flamboyance of Flamingos (cruise missiles, not those pink things) and struck a Russian space complex in Samara. This complex was responsible for assembling Soyuz-2 rockets, as well as electronics and precision testing.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4wz0xuY

Everybody, Peter Zine here coming from Colorado. It is the 15th of August. And the news is that Ukraine using a modified weapon system has just attacked the city of Samara and Russia and severely damaged one of the space complexes, specifically the place where the Russians assemble their Soyuz two rockets. This is the primary Russian launch vehicle to get satellites up into space. Damage levels at this point are questionable, but we know there have been hard hits on the major buildings that actually do the work, especially for things like electronics and precision testing. So for the moment, Russia's space program is now offline, and the idea that the Ukrainians won't hit again is kind of silly. Right now, Russia has kind of a hybridized space program. They're still participating with the United States on the ISS, although I wouldn't expect that to last a whole lot longer. ISS is the International Space Station. And they do have some legacy satellites up there, but they were hoping to build their own network

of a couple hundred satellites that to be kind of a local Starlink equivalent so that they have independent military observation and independent communications. That is at a minimum on hold now. They were really only planning on launching 10, maybe if they're really lucky, 20 satellites a year, and now that's completely at zero.

In addition to that, there's the question of how the Ukrainians did this. It's something called a Flamingo missile. Now, if you remember back a year or two ago, there were some conversations about the United States sending some of its new truck-mounted Tomahawk missiles, which is the United States' premier mid-strike cruise missile. Anyway, sending them to Ukraine. Ukraine lobbied very, very hard for that, but ultimately the United States decided no. So the Ukrainians, for all intents and purposes, built their own. The Flamingo has a warhead that is significantly more powerful than the Tomahawk.

It's modular, but it can be up to 1,000 kilograms, which is well over twice what the typical Tomahawk carries. It has a slightly better range, it with a lighter warhead. It's not quite as fast. Probably the biggest weakness of the Flamingo versus the Tomahawk is that the United States can use, of course, its satellite network to retask it on the fly, where the Ukrainians cannot yet do that. Although, considering what they're doing with drones, some version of that is probably going to be, possible in the not too distant future. Anyway, it in essence is a flying truck bomb. It's not as accurate as the tomahawk, but because it hits so much harder, it almost is as good. And the really important thing is it's because it's a simpler piece of equipment, fiberglass instead

of titanium, the Ukrainians can crank out three of them a day, whereas the tomahawk, they can only produce about 60 a year, so that's what, five a month? Yeah, five a month. So a half a dozen of these things were used in the attack on Samara. Most of them were shot down, but with three a day being the production rate, it's very, very simple to see this being a major industrial factor in the weeks and months to come. So in summary, the Russians probably won't have a space program by the end of the year. That makes them completely dependent upon third party reconnaissance primarily from China. The Ukrainians are being able to throw so much tonnage into the air that there's really no industrial facility in Russia within a thousand miles of the border

now that is safe at all. Because if you're not going to defend your space program as Russia, there's really not much left that is more important aside from Moscow itself. And we've seen a contraction of Russian air defense around critical sites in Moscow and very little else. What we're basically seen is the disembowelment of Russia's capability of being the technological power. And all that's left is for it to be a resource power, exporting raw materials such as crude oil in order to get the currency it needs in order to purchase Chinese product. But as the Ukrainians basically march with drones through the entire industrial plant, that capacity is disappearing. And we'll probably see an end of Russia's

ability to be a large-scale resource exporter before the end of the year as well, at least as regards the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, and that's going to be over two-thirds of the total. So we really are seeing the industrial destruction and removal of Russia from the global space. That has thousands of downstream impacts, and that is a topic we will revisit at length in the days and weeks to come.