Putin Dismisses Roscosmos Head

The agency has been headed by the former transport minister.

Putin has dismissed Roscosmos CEO Yury Borisov. The corresponding decree was published on the Kremlin website. Dmitry Bakanov, who previously served as deputy transport minister and from 2011 to 2019 headed the Gonets Satellite System company, has been appointed the new head of the state corporation. The Gonets Satellite System company is the single operator for Roscosmos' communication, broadcasting and retransmission systems, The Moscow Times writes.

Borisov was appointed head of the space state corporation in July 2022. He succeeded Dmitry Rogozin, who had headed Roscosmos for four years. Borisov's possible resignation has been discussed since autumn 2024, Vedomosti sources said. Borisov's last meeting with Putin, as reported by the Kremlin, took place last November. It was devoted to preparing a national project in the field of space activities. According to an RBC source familiar with the situation, the decision to dismiss Borisov was taken amid uncertainty over the parameters of implementing the National Space Centre project in Moscow, which is being built on the territory of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre. ‘The cost of construction is increasing, accordingly, the distribution of territories is changing and the question of future operating costs arises,’ the interlocutor of the publication explained.

Before joining Roscosmos, Borisov had been overseeing the state rearmament programme since 2011 - first as deputy chairman of the military-industrial commission, then as deputy defence minister and later as deputy prime minister. Under him, the Russian defence industry complex (DIC) was receiving 2 trillion rubles annually and was supposed to produce divisions of new Armata tanks, a new strategic bomber, 600 aircraft and thousands of helicopters by 2020, as well as bring the share of modern weapons to 70%. However, the full-scale war against Ukraine showed that Borisov had failed in his task - the Russian army entered the country with old hardware.

In his first full year as head of Roscosmos, Borisov announced that the state plan for space launches had failed. The space state corporation conducted only 19 launches in 2023, which is 3 fewer than in the first year of the war. Compared to pre-war 2021, the number of launches is down by a quarter, and almost halved when compared to the early 2000s. The state corporation made fewer launches only in 2020 amid the pandemic and ‘lockdowns’. Borisov attributed such results to US sanctions, which cut the corporation off from foreign customers and partners. Also under Borisov, the first Russian space mission to the moon in half a century failed - the Luna-25 station, which had been under preparation for more than 10 years, crashed while landing. However, Borisov himself called the experience ‘priceless’ and attributed the failure to the 50-year break in the research programme.

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