With 13–15 ton payload in LEO, it was intended as up-middle-class launcher greater than 7-ton-payload middle Soyuz and smaller than 20-ton-payload heavy Proton.

Also in the 1980s Vladimir Chelomey's firm proposed the never realised 15-ton Uragan spaceplane, which would have been launched by Zenit-2.

[4] A third pad, Site 35 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome was never completed, and work was abandoned after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Zenit-2 has a fairly low flight rate, as the Russian government usually avoids flying national-security payloads on Ukrainian rockets.

Only one such launch was conducted, with a group of Globalstar satellites, which ended in failure after a computer error resulted in the premature cutoff of the second stage.