IMAGE: Valery Sharifulin/TASS
On September 6, President Vladimir Putin will visit Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East in order to oversee the situation on the site and discuss issues related to the implementation of the project.
According to reprots, the financing questions related to space corporation Roscosmos, and the construction of the launchpad for Angara rockets and infrastructure of the launchpad for Soyuz rockets would be among the key topics to discuss. It’s expected that Putin’s visit will have a notable impact to the course of construction works at Vostochny. In particular, it’s expected that Roscosmos could re-assign the agreement on these works from the troubled PSO Kazan company to a public not-for-profit organisation, which is now being created by the Defense Ministry. Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Yury Borisov said that such a company may be involved in the works on Vostochny.
Roscosmos signed a contract with PSO Kazan in September 2018. The launch pad and infrastructure for Angara rockets were set to be built by 2022. However, the implementation of the taks faced mutliple problems. Tax authorities intended to declare PSO Kazan bankrupt with the amount of claims of almost 2 billion rubles. However, later, the parties entered into a settlement agreement. In January 2019, Deputy Prime Minister Borisov even said that Roscosmos may terminate the contract with PSO Kazan, but this was not done to avoid further delays in the project.
All this as well as a well-known corruption factor led to the situation when a first launch of Angara rocket from Vostochny Cosmodrome was rescheduled from 2021 to 2023. The Russian top leadership does have significant concerns regarding the ability of Roscosmos’ top officials to even this. Therefore, some urgent measures are expected to be employed to guarantee a first Angara launch from the cosmodrome in 2023.
