Six radars of this type were built on the periphery of the Soviet Union starting in the 1960s to provide ballistic missile warnings for attacks from different directions.

In common with other Soviet and Russian early warning radars they are named after rivers, the Dnestr and the Dnepr.

[8] TsSO-P (standing for Russian: центральная станция обнаружения – полигонная meaning central detection station – test site) was selected for further development, together with the Dunay-2.

[8] TsSO-P was effective at satellite tracking and was chosen as the radar of the Istrebitel Sputnikov (IS) anti-satellite programme.

[8] Construction at the two sites started between 1962 and 1963 with improvements in the TsSO-P test model being fed back into the deployed units.

[12][13] The Dnestr radars were accepted for service by the Soviet Air Defence Forces in April 1967 and became part of the space surveillance network SKKP.

According to Podvig (2002), it seems they were positioned to identify missile launches from NATO submarines in the Norwegian and North Seas.

[8] A version of this radar was built at the Sary Shagan test site and was called TsSO-PM (Russian: ЦСО-ПМ).

[2] The Dnepr involved the horn antenna being reduced from 20 to 14 metres in height and the addition of a polarising filter.

[2][16][17] The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty required that early warning radars were located on the periphery of national territory and faced outwards.

This caused problems when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 as many of the radar stations were now in newly independent states.

A 1994 agreement between Russia and Latvia agreed that the two Dnepr radars there would stop working in 1998, and would be fully demolished by 2000.

[20]: 129 [21]: 65 [11]: 426 Russia signed an agreement with Ukraine in 1992 allowing it to continue using the Dnepr radars at Sevastopol and Mukachevo.

The stations were run by Ukrainian personnel and data was sent to the headquarters of the Russian early warning system in Solnechnogorsk.