In the small hours of 15 August, air-raid sirens climbed over Russia’s Samara region. Minutes later, residents nearly 900 kilometres from the Ukrainian border were filming a wall of orange fire rising above an industrial district — the signature of a warhead that had flown most of the width of European Russia to arrive there.

The weapon was the FP-5 Flamingo, the home-built cruise missile that has quietly become Ukraine’s longest reach. President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the raid the same day and named two targets that, together, say a great deal about how this war is now fought: the Progress Rocket and Space Centre in Samara, and the Savasleyka airfield — home to the MiG-31 jets that carry Russia’s Kinzhal missiles.

A rocket cradle in the crosshairs

Samara is one of the beating hearts of Russia’s space industry. The Progress Rocket and Space Centre there builds the Soyuz-2 family of launch vehicles — the workhorses that loft everything from cosmonauts to military satellites — and sits cheek by jowl with the Aviakor aircraft plant. Open-source analysts placed the overnight fire squarely in that shared industrial zone.

Ukraine’s General Staff said a direct hit had been recorded and a blaze had taken hold. Kyiv has increasingly aimed at the deep infrastructure that keeps Russia’s missiles and satellites flying, rather than the front line itself — and a plant that assembles Soyuz rockets, some of them tied to Moscow’s nascent satellite-internet ambitions, is exactly that kind of target.

The MiG-31 problem

The second target was an airfield, not a factory. Savasleyka, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, is one of the bases from which Russia flies the MiG-31 — specifically the MiG-31K variant, modified to carry the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile slung under its belly.

The Kinzhal is one of the weapons Russia uses to menace Ukrainian cities, and it is nearly impossible to intercept once released at altitude and speed. So Kyiv is going after the problem on the ground: hit the base, and you threaten the launch platform before it ever gets airborne. Zelensky listed Savasleyka alongside Samara and an oil terminal at Ust-Luga in the same round of strikes.

Ukraine’s growing reach

The Flamingo is the reason these targets are now on the table at all. Built by the Ukrainian firm Fire Point and revealed in 2025, it pairs a roughly 1,150 kg warhead — heavier than a Tomahawk’s — with a reported range of up to 3,000 kilometres, flying low to slip under radar. It has turned Russia’s deep rear, once a sanctuary, into a shooting gallery.

None of this decides the war on its own. But every rocket plant on fire and every Kinzhal base under threat is another argument Kyiv is making in metal: that distance no longer buys Moscow safety.

Sources: Ukrainian General Staff; Office of the President of Ukraine; Kyiv Independent; Kyiv Post; Euronews; Militarnyi; United24 Media.