General Yuri Borisov was deputy prime minister and responsible for overseeing the Kremlin's military-industrial complex

Putin puts a military man on the throne of Russia's space agency

photo_camera PHOTO/Kremlin - President Vladimir Putin has appointed General Yuri Borisov (left) as the new director general of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, which brings together an empire of more than 60 subsidiary companies

President Vladimir Putin has just appointed a military man to pilot the Russian Space Agency, one of the most precious jewels of Moscow's technological and scientific potential.

The choice is a military man turned politician, Yuri Inavovich Borisov, 65, who replaces the tall, burly and loquacious Dimitry Rogozin, 58, who for the past four years has been the all-powerful head of the State Space Corporation. Roscosmos. This is the huge industrial organisation that brings together more than 60 subsidiary companies, several thousand engineers and technicians and monopolises rocket manufacturing and launching from Russia

PHOTO/Roscosmos - El director general entrante, Yuri Borisov, y el saliente, Dimitri Rogozin (al fondo) se reunieron el día 15 de julio con la cúpula de la Corporación para dejar sentadas las prioridades de la nueva etapa que ahora se inicia

Rogozin's replacement came as no surprise in Russian and US space circles. The change had been in the making for some time and was accelerated only three months ago. The exact date was not known, but it was known who the successor would be: the deputy prime minister responsible for the military-industrial complex and the space sector, General Yuri Borisov, one of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin's ten cronies.

The formal handover took place on 15 July, in the usual laconic style of the Russian authorities. A communiqué issued by the Kremlin at 14:42 Moscow time on the same day announced that "by virtue of an Executive Order and in accordance with Article 83 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Yury Borisov is stepping down as deputy prime minister".

Two minutes later, at 14:44, another Kremlin communiqué officially announced that Vladimir Putin "has signed" an Executive Order by which Dimitry Rogozin "resigns from his position as Director General of the Roscosmos State Space Corporation". One minute later, at 14:45, the Presidency of the Republic issued a third and final statement on the matter, informing that "in accordance with an Executive Order, Yury Borisov has been appointed Director General of Roscosmos".

PHOTO/Kremlin - Dimitri Rogozin muestra a los presidentes Putin y Alexander Lukashenko (de Bielorrusia), un panel con las principales instalaciones del nuevo cosmódromo de Vostochny (Siberia), que será la principal base de lanzamientos espaciales de Rusia
Call for greater responsibility

Speculation in Russia and the rest of the world as to the reasons for Rogozin's dismissal has been speculated about in all sorts of ways. There are hypotheses that point to inefficient management, serious cases of corruption and even Putin's lack of confidence. But none of this has anything to do with reality, quite the contrary.

The outgoing journalist and veteran politician with a strong personality is a man of the president's complete confidence, who has fought tooth and nail against the corruption schemes of the managers of the gigantic Russian space network, especially the one surrounding the construction of the new Vostochny Cosmodrome (Siberia), which he has managed to put into operation after putting the corrupt in jail.

PHOTO/TASS - En su cargo de vice primer ministro del complejo industrial-militar y del espacio, el general Yuri Borisov curso una visita en octubre de 2019 a Venezuela, donde se entrevistó con el presidente Nicolas Maduro y suscribió numerosos contratos de armamento

He is a person who regularly deals with Putin on official business, alone or in groups, and who has held various positions of great responsibility in the Kremlin's power structure. He was even appointed Russia's ambassador to NATO (2008-2011), where he strongly opposed Georgia's and Ukraine's attempts to join the Washington Treaty.

The truth is that his replacement suggests that he will be promoted to a position even closer to Putin and of much greater relevance than the one he held until now. Independent media in Moscow with contacts in the highest echelons of power anticipate that the former Roscosmos director general will be promoted to the post of head of the presidential office. They also predict his possible appointment as Kremlin Commissioner in the newly occupied territories in Ukraine and in the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk under Moscow's protection.

Dmitry Rogozin has been replaced in due course by the person who was being groomed and waiting to take his place. Exactly the same man - General Yuri Borisov - who had already replaced him on 18 May 2018, when Rogozin had to take the reins of the Russian Space Agency and replace the economist Igor Komarov, who was not entirely to Vladimir Putin's liking.

PHOTO/Kremlin - El ya ex director general de Roscosmos está llamado a mayores responsabilidades políticas. Fue embajador de Rusia ante la OTAN, responsable de supervisar el complejo industrial-militar de Rusia y le espera un importante cargo cerca de Vladimir Putin
Following in Dmitry Rogozin's footsteps

It was then that Rogozin had to give up his post as deputy prime minister for the military-industrial complex and space - a post he had held since December 2011 - and hand it over to Yuri Borisov, who is the man following in his footsteps. He is a military officer specialising in transmissions, with a degree in computer science and mathematics who, according to official information, left active service in the Russian Armed Forces in 1998 after spending nearly 25 years and reaching the rank of general.

General Yury Borisov also enjoys Putin's explicit confidence. Until now, he has been responsible for directing the defence technological base, including nuclear defence, military procurement policy, military-technical cooperation with third countries and oversight of the space sector. He was also responsible for the modernisation of GLONASS, Russia's global positioning satellite system, equivalent to the US GPS, the EU's Galileo and China's Beidou.

PHOTO/Kremlin - El último despacho conocido de Yuri Borisov con el presidente Putin tuvo lugar el 4 de abril, en el que le informó de la situación de la industria de defensa, del impacto de las sanciones y de la preparación del nuevo Programa Estatal de Armamento

His last known dispatch with President Putin took place on 4 April. At that scheduled meeting, Borisov reported on the situation in the defence industry as a whole and the outcome of measures to mitigate sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and other nations over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

According to a Kremlin statement, the deputy prime minister said that he was "collecting data for drafting the proposal for the State Armament Programme by mid-2023" to be signed by Putin himself. The document, according to the Russian presidential briefing note, includes 'the development of new unconventional kinetic and directed-energy weapons systems, as well as robotic command and control systems managed by artificial intelligence'. His main priorities now are to push ahead with the construction of a Russian orbital station, the joint lunar base with China, and to continue to revive the national space industry.

PHOTO/Andrei Shelepin-Roscosmos - El primer vuelo al espacio de la nueva cosmonauta rusa, Anna Kikina, está previsto para septiembre a bordo de la capsula tripulada Dragon 5 de la compañía SpaceX, junto a dos norteamericanos y un japonés

On the same day that Dmitry Rogozin stepped down as head of the space agency, a few hours earlier he had signed his last agreement with NASA administrator Bill Nelson. The two had sealed a seat swap, so that US and Russian manned space capsules could carry astronauts from both nations to the International Space Station (ISS), ensure their maintenance and bring them back to Earth.

New Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina is already officially aboard the US Dragon 5 mission, as are Japan's Koichi Wakata and NASA astronauts Nicole Mann - mission commander - and Josh Kassada, who is the pilot of a flight scheduled to take off from Florida in September this year. As a counterpart, US astronaut Frank Rubio will fly from the Baikonur Cosmodrome also in September, but on the Russian Soyuz MS-22 mission, together with cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin.

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