Putin changes the head of Roscosmos and the dialogue for the Space Station reopens

19 July 20222 years ago babelfish

Yury Ivanovich Borisov is the new hierarch who has taken over from Dmitry Rogozin as general director of Roscosmos, the main Russian space agency. The in-depth study by Enrico Ferrone

Yury Ivanovich Borisov is the new hierarch who has taken over from Dmitry Rogozin as general director of Roscosmos, the main Russian space agency. Vladimir Putin made the change without giving any explanation or motivation.

We know of the new head of Russian space that he graduated from Kalinin Suvorov Military School and Radioelectronics Higher Command School in 1978. And that, after serving in the armed forces of the Soviet Union and Russia as his last post, he was Deputy Prime Defense and space industry minister in Dmitry Medvedev's second cabinet, which remained afloat even when the premier resigned after Putin delivered the 2020 presidential address to the Federal Assembly, in which he proposed several amendments to the constitution. So a perfect boyar of the Soviet nomenklatura recycled into an oligarch and warmongering dictatorship. Aligned and agrees with the highest level of power.

What prompted the tyrant of St. Petersburg to dismiss Rogozin? A brief statement only announced his dismissal with immediate effect. Meduza , an independent Latvian-based newspaper headed by Galina Timchenko, reported a couple of days before the defenestration that the Kremlin was secretly considering moving Rogozin to the presidential administration or supervisor position for two regions of the country. 'Ukraine occupied by Russian forces. The head of the courageous editor cited sources who claimed that Rogozin always remained "favorable" with Putin, who had been "remarkably friendly" towards him in two public meetings since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February. All words, let's face it, which are a sop rather than a real declamation of the facts.

Some American sources claim that what annoyed Putin to the point of relieving his trust from office was last July 4, Roscosmos published photos showing Russian cosmonauts on the ISS (International Space Station) exhibiting colors. of the regions he occupied, giving space to both NASA and ESA to echo it, a tempting opportunity for an inappropriate venue for political propaganda. Probably this is one of the reasons why symbology is always of fundamental importance in any dictatorship.

But unfortunately the space or rather its operators were the first to have been affected by what is happening in the region wedged by a border war: Rogozin a few days before his political demolition had declared that he would have instructed the cosmonauts of the ISS not to use any more a European robotic arm on the Nauka module, part of the Russian segment of the station, in retaliation for ESA's announcement of the end of ExoMars cooperation. A nice maneuver by the Russian chief who, however, did not understand that the decision would have a greater effect on Russian operations on the Station than on European ones. And perhaps Putin did not digest this either.

After all, Rogozin has always exhibited a hard line from the agency he directs. It is enough to remember when in March he accused Elon Musk of being a businessman who for his own gains blocked the low orbit and also for having shown himself ready to leave the Space Station abandoning it adrift to make it fall randomly on India or Europe. In short, a truly exemplary person! At the moment, however, he has not commented on his dismissal. There is only a post on his Telegram account with a thank you video.

Meanwhile, changes of seats aside, there is another interesting news that comes from the same para-government areas.

At the same moment in which the Kremlin announced the removal of Rogozin from Roscosmos, NASA announced the implementation of an agreement with the Russian agency on which it has been working to tell the truth since last year. There will be a cross-exchange of crews for Soyuz and Dragon to maintain the thread of partnerships and continue the routine maintenance work on the Station.

Anna Kikina will go to the space outpost aboard Musk's vehicle # 5 in September and Frank Rubio will travel on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. Later there will be two other travelers whose launches have been scheduled with this agreement. Andrei Fedyaev has been assigned to the Crew-6 mission, which will depart in the spring of 2023, while Loral O'Hara will fly the Soyuz MS-23.

In this plan there is obviously also a training program and therefore a cross-presence of Russians and Americans on the training sites.

It does not seem so much a peace made as a possible detente between two opposing factions and above all, a promise, albeit tenuous, to keep the Space Station alive despite the threats of the recent past. Why this assumption? Because it is necessary that there are both Russians and Americans on board to guarantee certain accesses that can only be used by astronauts and cosmonauts of the two great nations. A small peace made or a necessary contingency? In our opinion, the most important thing right now is that dialogue is resumed.

"Of the diman there is no certainty!"

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/putin-cambia-il-capo-di-roscosmos-e-si-riapre-il-dialogo-per-la-stazione-spaziale/ on Mon, 18 Jul 2022 07:48:26 +0000.