- Category
- World
Russia’s Rassvet Already Gets at Least Two Daily Hour-Plus Windows Over Ukraine
Prefer U24 Media on Google
- Authors
![Photo of Roman Kohanets]( "Photo of Roman Kohanets")
-111f0e5095e02c02446ffed57bfb0ab1.jpeg "Photo of Roman Kohanets")
Russia connected residents of a settlement in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug to a remote electronic voting system through its Rassvet satellite network on September 20, its first trial with real users rather than company engineers, Militarnyi reported.
We bring you stories from the ground. Your support keeps our team in the field.
The Ukrainian defense outlet cited Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia's Central Election Commission, who announced the test's success.
Militarnyi described how low-orbit satellites operated by the developer, Bureau 1440, relayed data to a ground terminal in the settlement. The signal then passed to a user's tablet over Wi-Fi, opening a connection to the voting platform, the outlet noted.
Earlier company trials had verified the link with engineers alone, Militarnyi explained. Pamfilova declared the experiment a success, the outlet added.
Russia's Central Election Commission now plans to assess extending the technology to other regions with limited access to telecommunications, according to Militarnyi. The country has 37 regions containing hard-to-reach territories where the system could apply, the report stated.
Militarnyi wrote that Bureau 1440 is deploying Rassvet as a low-orbit satellite communications network. The company placed its first 16 satellites of the target group in orbit in March 2026 and added a further 16 in July, according to the outlet.
According to the company's own account, the system relies on 5G NTN technology to connect its satellites to ground terminals. Bureau 1440 is separately developing inter-satellite laser communication and has claimed data transfers between spacecraft over distances of up to 1,000 kilometers at speeds of up to 10 Gbit/s.
Militarnyi emphasized that those figures come from the company itself.
The outlet noted that Russia accelerated the rollout after successfully blocking Starlink along the front line. Russian units had earlier relied on terminals from the American Starlink service.
In January 2026, Ukraine reported that Shahed drones were operating via Starlink, prompting Kyiv's defense ministry to appeal to SpaceX, the outlet added. A domestic network would end Moscow's reliance on an external provider that could be pressured to cut service, according to Militarnyi.
Militarnyi indicated that Rassvet could eventually support more than communications, potentially assisting drone control, operational coordination, and real-time data transfer. In principle, the outlet added, terminals could be fitted to drones, aircraft, and even missiles.
Even so, the satellites were already providing at least two daily "communication windows" over Ukraine as of July 2026, each lasting more than an hour, Militarnyi reported.
The voting trial comes against a rollout that has repeatedly fallen short of its targets. The first Rassvet-3 group launched on March 23, and a second followed on July 19, yet six months on, none had reached the planned operational altitude of 800 kilometers.
Most of the initial batch settled near 507 kilometers, one satellite reentered the atmosphere on June 6, and two from the second group have drifted low enough to risk the same fate.
Discuss this article:
