The Kremlin has dismissed the controversial head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, ending a term that was dogged by rampant allegations of corruption and major tensions with other space agencies, including NASA.
Dmitry Rogozin will be replaced as the agency's director general by Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov, who previously served as deputy defense minister, the Kremlin said in its July 15 announcement.
No reason for Rogozin’s dismissal was given. It was unclear whether he had been pushed out of government entirely or would be given a new position elsewhere.
Rogozin made no public statement after the dismissal. However, a couple hours after the order was published, Roskosmos’s press service published a video on its YouTube channel showing highlights of Rogozin’s tenure. The video concluded with the words: “Rogozin. This is just the beginning.”
Also not long after the Kremlin order was released, Roskosmos announced a new partnership agreement with NASA, providing for “integrated crews” on both Russian and U.S. space flights.
NASA has not released any information about a new partnership agreement or commented on Rogozin's dismissal.
A nationalist politician who previously served as a pugnacious ambassador to NATO, Rogozin had overseen Russia’s storied space agency since 2011, first as a deputy prime minister and then as director general after President Vladimir Putin reorganized the country’s space and military industrial complex.
Roskosmos is a sprawling, billion-dollar state-controlled corporation that inherited an infrastructure and reputation for ambitious space exploration during the Soviet era.
It’s also been a key partner in building and operating the International Space Station (ISS), working closely with foreign space agencies including NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) for decades.
Under Rogozin’s tenure, Roskosmos suffered from a steady stream of critical reports about alleged corruption and theft.
Putin ordered the building of a new spaceport in Russia’s Far East, but hundreds of millions of rubles have gone missing from the ongoing construction of the facility, called Vostochny Cosmodrome.
Prosecutors have launched criminal investigations into subcontractors, and the head of Russia’s Audit Chamber, Aleksei Kudrin, has documented more than 30 billion rubles' ($512 million) worth of financial violations at the agency, most recently last month.
Kudrin’s reports on Roskomos’s embezzlement problems have frequently been released publicly in televised meetings with Putin.
Rogozin’s tenure has also been marked by serious strains with NASA, Russia’s largest space partner.
Despite a decade of worsening relations between Washington and Moscow, NASA and Roskosmos maintained a working relationship. NASA relied exclusively on Roskosmos to ferry astronauts and supplies to and from the space station after the U.S. shuttle program ended -- a lucrative source of income for Russia.
That began to change in 2020, when the private U.S. company SpaceX successfully flew astronauts to the station, signaling the end of Russia’s virtual monopoly on transport to the station.
The relationship strained further in 2018 when a small hole was found in the hull of part of the space station. Rogozin suggested publicly that a U.S. astronaut may have drilled the hole deliberately as a way to get back to Earth ahead of schedule.
In 2021, a Russian cargo craft arriving at the station had a misfire, nearly knocking the station out of its orbit.
Later that year, Russia defense officials conducted a test of an anti-satellite weapon, sending a cloud of debris hurtling around the Earth and threatening the ISS. Anonymous officials at Roskosmos said they were unaware of the test, and quietly voiced their own concerns. But the United States responded angrily.
Earlier this month, Roskosmos again drew a rebuke from NASA when three cosmonauts aboard the station posed for photographs with the flags of separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.
The timing of the stunt coincided with Russian claims that its forces completely controlled the Ukrainian region of Luhansk and that its troops were advancing slowly in what appeared to an effort to take all of Donetsk, as well.