Roscosmos explained to RIA Novosti the imposition of sanctions against the Progress Rocket and Space Center (RSC), the developer and manufacturer of Soyuz-2 rockets, as well as civil and military spacecraft.
The state corporation claims that, according to the requirements of Russian legislation, “it is obliged to apply sanctions for improper performance by executors of contractual obligations.” Roskosmos did not name a specific reason for imposing sanctions against the country's leading enterprise in the country's rocket and space industry, which in 2020 ensured 14 out of 16 Russian launches.
In December, the US Department of Commerce published a list of Russian and Chinese organizations that have been sanctioned for cooperation with the military, in particular, the Samara RCC Progress.
The amount of claims of Roskosmos to the Progress RCC exceeds 4.7 billion rubles.
In August, Progress CEO Dmitry Baranov told RIA Novosti that the dispatch of a pair of Resurs-P civil satellites into orbit was postponed due to the lack of components supplied by external contractors. In the same month, analyst Bart Hendrix, in a publication in The Space Review, spoke about the development of military satellites by the Samara enterprise and the difficulties associated with this.
At present, mass layoffs are being carried out at the Progress RCC, and Roscosmos is withdrawing money from this enterprise. In July 2018, the general director of the corporation Dmitry Rogozin announced the merger of the profitable RCC Progress and the unprofitable Khrunichev Center, which produces Proton-M and Angara rockets, into production cooperation. “We need to quickly adopt a plan for the financial recovery of the Khrunichev Center,” the manager explained his decision.
According to him, from 2018 to 2020, thanks to the efforts of Roskosmos, the government and the Ministry of Finance, the financial “hole” created by the Moscow Khrunichev Center was reduced by 70 billion rubles.
