At 03:20 MSK (00:20 UTC) on December 21, 2018 the Space and Air Defense Forces conducted a successful launch of a Proton-M launcher from Baykonur. The satellite that was successfully delivered into orbit by the Briz-M booster stage, received the official designation Cosmos-2533.

Cosmos-2533 is the Blagovest communication satellite (No. 13L) produced at the Reshetnev ISS enterprise in Zheleznogorsk.

Previous launch of a satellite of this type, Cosmos-2526, took place in April 2018.