Moscow (Reuters)-Kremlin fired the head of the Russian space agency on Thursday after a term of less than three years marked by the spectacular failure of the first Russian mission to the moon in 47 years.
In a statement, Kremlin said Yuri Borisov, who had headed Roscos since July 2022, was replaced by Dmitry Bakanov, a deputy transportation-running vice-running company before entering the government.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said that Kremlin had no complaints against Borisov and that his removal was a matter of turnover.
“This corporation needs to develop dynamically, so there is turnover,” said Peskov.
Since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin has become the first man to go to space in 1961, Russia has been proud to be a leading power in spatial exploration. But his ambitions suffered a hard blow in August 2023, when his unmanned mission Luna-23 crashed into the moon’s surface while trying to land.
Borisov, despite this failure, had set ambitious plans for the coming years, while Russia is preparing to launch its own orbital space station. The new project will replace the former International Space Station (ISS), in which Russia has collaborated closely with the United States, even after relations went into crisis because of the war in Ukraine.
Last year, Borisov approved a schedule that the first two modules of the new Russian station would be launched in 2027. Russia said it plans to maintain a continuous crew presence in space and conduct scientific, economic and security -related projects that were not possible in the Russian segment of ISS.
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The world powers are competing not only to explore the space, but also to potentially implement weapons in it. With the imminence of expiration in 2026 of the last major agreement between Russia and the US that limits the number of nuclear weapons, each side has accused the other plans to trigger a space -running race in space.
Borisov, the boss who is leaving office, previously served as Deputy Defense Minister under the command of Sergei Shoigu, who last year was replaced by President Vladimir Putin and assumed a new role as secretary of the Russian Security Council.
His replacement, Bakanov, is the former director of a company called Gonets, who operates a Russian satellite communications system similar to US Starlink, but much smaller in size and mainly used for government purposes.
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The company was the Russian partner at Oneweb, a global satellite communications project. Russia had planned to actively participate in OneWeb, but withdrew in 2018 after the FSB intelligence agency said it was a threat to national security.
