This apparently is a building/warehouse valued under $30 million that was under construction and never completed, never paid for. It is inside the boundary line of the cosmodrome which makes it notable, but this does not impact space operations for Russia directly.
However it's not like they just seized a Soyuz rocket or crates of rocket engines, or even a train load of rocket fuel and they're holding it in lieu of payment now.
Kazakhstan in recent days has been on record saying that they intend to take small steps towards further independence from Russia.
Russia has now built a launch site inside Russia (Vostochny Cosmodrome), in its far east. Although they don't seem to be actually using it that much at the moment, they wouldn't be cut off from space.
The eastward boost you get from the earths rotation is just: 2 * pi * cos(latitude)/day so the difference is: 2 * pi * r_Earth*(cos(45.2deg)-cos(51.8deg))/day = 40m/s.
Which doesn’t sound like a lot but can add up.
I compared Plesetsk (Russia) vs Baikonur (Kazakhstan) in the Silverbird Astronautics calculator for Soyuz v2-1B using 3.3m fairing and without Fregat, and I got 1552kg estimated payload to escape for Plesetsk and 1665kg for Baikonur. 7% performance hit to high energy trajectories.
I never considered this and your response made me ask google the question: "Where is the best place to launch a vehicle?"
"The land at the equator is moving 1670 km per hour, and land halfway to the pole is only moving 1180 km per hour, so launching from the equator makes the spacecraft move almost 500 km/hour faster once it is launched."
Yeah it's no accident SpaceX built their test launch facility on the beach in Texas, less than 10 miles from the southernmost point in Texas. Brownsville is about 20 miles away and is a natural, true deepwater port which is also helpful, but primary reason was to get as close to the equator as possible while still being on the US mainland. You can throw about 9% more mass into orbit on the equator than from NYC. Florida coastal property is mostly built out and southern Texas is mostly vacant + has a very favorable business climate and lax (state-level) environmental regulations which doesn't hurt either.
It's definitely not optimal, but GP probably wanted to highlight that it's not much worse than Baikonur (45°), at least when you compare it to Cape Canaveral (28°) or Kourou (5°). Actually, Roskosmos was cooperating with ESA to launch some of their rockets from Kourou, but of course since the Ukraine attack that is suspended (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-suspends-coopera...)
I don't know anything about space launches, how come the first orbital launch site in mainland Europe is in Esrange in northern Sweden, latitude 67° N? Are different latitudes good for different trajectories?
Yes, Esrange is best suited to launches into Sun Synchronous Orbit, which is high-inclination (nearly a polar orbit). It's very popular for things like Earth observation satellites.
I do not believe russians will want or need to get into space until 2050, because the economy of this country is screwed and electronics tech-stack is dependent on global market to deliver required chips... Needless to say the window of opportunity to receive the electronic components is closing. They can't run a space program on gray market deliveries.
I don't think you understand russian mentality. If it will be the only option, they will run their space program, however gutted and affected, from grey market. The war will only strengthen this mentality and approach.
Just don't expect thats the same grey market that we individuals are exposed to, currently places like Turkey, Georgia, Belarus and plenty of *stan countries are happily providing all the banned wares. Its not like they need to buy enriched plutonium (of which they have plenty), rather just chips and few things around.
Or they go completely China way, they can pay in raw materials like platinum, oil, gold, diamonds etc.
To run space programs they'll need money. Even with resources they have running both war and space programs will lead to catastrophic consequences. But I suspect that's exactly the way they'll choose.
For the time being, the West has been supplying Putin's troops with plenty of money (taxes from selling natural resources go into the federal budget, which is used to fund the military, and therefore the war). They made record profits last year.
IDK about gas, but the price cap on Russian oil is lower than what Russians need to break even. They are now losing money on each exported barrel, but IIRC they can't just stop the production; the wells would become unusable.
Of course, the price cap is only in force since December 2022, so the effects haven't fully shown themselves yet.
Where do you get that information about profitability? According to BBC [0] back in 2019 expenses per barrel was $25 before taxes. Obviously sanctions make everything more expensive (hardware, extraction, transport, insurance), but not that expensive.
If selling oil was unprofitable Putun would just burn it instead of selling it at loss just like they burned natural gas for $10,000,000 / day for months.
Yes, but it's unlikely they will continue their work outside of Russia and many people can very well be bought back. Western countries don't really help talent with Russian passports to leave the country and since space industry is very close to military it's only make it harder to get EU / US visas.
Source: I have a friend who worked at Sea Launch more than decade ago and now he wasn't able to get green card he won because of security clearance.
Access to space for the military is right up there with having a tank factory, rifle factory and bullet factory. You cannot be a superpower, let alone have a functional independent military without access to space.
Last i heard, china is also being limited in acquiring advanced electronics :
On October 7, the Biden administration unveiled a sweeping set of export controls that ban Chinese companies from buying advanced chips and chip-making equipment without a license. The rule also restricts the ability of “US persons” — including American citizens or green card holders — to provide support for the “development or production” of chips at certain manufacturing facilities in China.
It creates advanced electronics in the sense that it assembles them. It does not manufacture advanced or even mid-grade chips though which is the crucial point. That’s all Taiwan, Korea, Japan, USA.
I’m not sure that 7nm is not good enough to be called “mid-grade”, but SMIC definitely has the capability of manufacturing chips good enough to get to space.
Advanced stuff isn't necessary for space, most rockets/aerospace worked fine with 1960s tech. Obviously nicer chips can be useful, but it's not like TSMC/Samsung are necessary conditions for getting to the moon or making an ICBM.
SMIC makes 7nm chips, which is considered high-end. It's not the highest of the high end, but it's not far from that, and it's definitely considered high-end.
Mostly assembly with some fabrication. Most semiconductor manufacturing is in Korea and Taiwan, with assembly in China, India, Malaysia, etc. The majority of the design work happens outside of China as well.
> Last i heard, china is also being limited in acquiring advanced electronics :
In the short term, I'm sure China will be able to get whatever chips it needs (for military applications, at least) that are available on the civilian market, they'll just have to setup front companies, etc.
In the medium to long term, this will motivate China to build the capacity it needs. It might ever exactly be cutting edge, but I'm sure they'll get close enough that it won't matter too much.
> In the medium to long term, this will motivate China to build the capacity it needs. It might ever exactly be cutting edge, but I'm sure they'll get close enough that it won't matter too much.
which says to me, that the export bans is a failure in policy then.
The cost of the export ban is a drop in business value for all the companies being banned (and without compensation by the US gov't afaict). The ban isn't really going to prevent china from getting close-to-cutting-edge chips for military applications either. So the ban, and the associated costs, is for what exactly?!
> which says to me, that the export bans is a failure in policy then.
That's going too far. It's almost like saying "don't fight a battle that won't immediately win you the war." It's important not to overstate their effectiveness (an export ban won't hit some Achilles heel that grind their military to a halt), but that doesn't mean the short term effects aren't valuable and the right thing to do. These bans are delaying tactics, they'll make things harder but not impossible for Russia and China to do certain things, and they might have to make unwanted compromises (e.g. force short-term supply chain issues and redesigning using a less robust common civilian grade chip they can get on the grey market rather than the harder-to-get specialized chip they want).
Basically, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
this assumes that the "good" is enough, given just a bit more time.
My concern is that a delaying tactic is insufficient. The bans will force the domestic production, for real this time, in these technologies.
After all, necessity is the mother of all inventions. If china was able to buy, at "slightly" elevated prices, western produced chips, the gov't would not really be able to convince businesses to take the hit and pay high capital cost to produce a worse version just as a stepping stone. The investment capital is likely to be wasteful, or misspent - since the "fallback" of western products are available (until they go to war like russia, and the cut off is abrupt and sudden).
A pro-longed ban, like what we see today, without the actual war to trigger it, is likely to give the domestic production the reason it needs to actually get their act together. There's no western "fallback" to make them complacent.
So either they fail miserably, or succeed and wipe the west's technological advantage.
The "good idea", might not be so good if that were to actually happen.
> After all, necessity is the mother of all inventions. If china was able to buy, at "slightly" elevated prices, western produced chips, the gov't would not really be able to convince businesses to take the hit and pay high capital cost to produce a worse version just as a stepping stone. The investment capital is likely to be wasteful, or misspent - since the "fallback" of western products are available (until they go to war like russia, and the cut off is abrupt and sudden).
What do you mean? This is China we're talking about. Every major company has a cell of Communist party members. If the government makes a decision, you follow and don't complain too loudly or risk political consequences. And, IIRC, the Chinese government already made the decision to build up their chip industry years ago (Made in China 2025).
IMHO, it's quite plausible that not implementing an export ban would have just allowed them to make the transition to domestic production more cheaply and more smoothly.
What you’re missing is that factories were built in Ukraine as a part of reconstruction after WW2, but engineers were mostly Russian, relocated from Russia.
These days pretty much all Ukrainian space industry is dead, and it was dead even before war. Most competent people left for Russia or USA. Yes, they still provided some components just because it was cheaper to build them in the original factory, but in a last few years Russia just replaced all Ukraine components. Antares had Ukrainian fuel tanks I believe, but I doubt it’ll last long.
Regarding engineers, I don't think that's true at all — as a simple example, two of the three lead engineers on the Soviet space program were from Ukraine.
The political logic works even if Russia’s economy tanks he can point to people outside the country as scapegoats. If Russia had normal trade relations with other countries and everything was in shambles then the only blame would be internal.
The crazy thing is their population was crashing so fast adding territory for the people is more important than adding territory for the natural resources.
I think you're confused about the politics of the region. The US isn't a major factor in the decision making of central Asian countries. China however has taken a much more active role in central Asia which has changed the balance of power and enabled countries to disengage more from Russia.
Russia isn't currently in a position to invade another country.
In the medium-long term, *stans might want to balance the relations between Russia and China (and a bit with the West) which might make further Russian invasions unlikely.
Yeah to me (admittedly a complete outsider) they seem to just barely have the capability to remain in the fight in Ukraine, it's almost unthinkable that they'd try to open another front.
I've also been wondering recently if Georgia might see this war as an opportune moment to retake South Ossetia and Abkhazia, or if Moldova might attempt to reestablish control of Transnistria. With Russia underresourced and distracted there may not ever be a better time to do so. Note that I understand this is complex and that none of those three regions are officially 100% controlled and occupied by Russia the way Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk are, and that residents might not 100% desire to be "liberated" (I haven't spoken to anyone from those and don't follow opinion polling).
Unlikely; the current Georgian gov't is rabidly pro-Russian. They've got the previous (anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian) president thrown in jail, slowly dying (Saakashvili). And the country is rammed full of Russian ex-pats.
Much of the populace seems extremely unhappy about this, but it's an unstable situation in the wrong way that would lead to military action in that way.
Most of those Russian expats are anti-Putin and anti-war. But I guess you don't care about that, as usual these days. We're the (old) new boogeyman, and this is Red Scare 2.0.
I never said I don't care about that. But the situation is complicated. While many of those Russians align like you say, it doesn't change the fact that it remains a mix, that Russians have a heavy influence there, that there's tensions around that, and that alienating Russia or taking explicit anti-Putin positions is what the current Georgian gov't is currently trying to avoid.
In any case I genuinely feel for the Russian anti-war or opposition diaspora and don't hold bigoted anti-Russian positions like others on this thread might be showing. It's a complicated situation and indicative of the broader problems we'll see more and more of as empires and hegemonies built around domination of hydrocarbon exports become more volatile.
OK, that's fair, and I apologize for putting words in your mouth. It's been the default assumption lately, sadly.
I am from Kazakhstan, and our government has been in a position similar to what they're experiencing in Georgia. Lots of paranoia about Putin trying to stir up something here. To slow down immigration, they implemented some new anti-immigration laws that aren't targeted specifically at Russian citizens (although it quite obvious to everyone bothering to observe), so they pretty much can't stay here for more than a few months. But I guess Georgia depends on migrant's money much more than we do, so they can't simply do the same.
Yeah I had read that a good number of anti-war people had gone there both before and after mobilisation. In fact I was watching a video by the youtuber "nfkrz" (from Chelyabinsk, left after the invasion and now lives in Tbilisi) who made a really interesting point. You can still travel to the EU if you're a Russian passport holder, however you do still need to get a visa from the destination country's embassy inside Russia. So if you wanted no part in the war and made it across the border to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia or Armenia or wherever you are kinda stuck, you can't travel onwards to (say) Germany because that would mean returning to Russia and risking trouble especially if you were supposed to be mobilised. Meanwhile if you remained (whether you were quietly against it, ambivalent or super pro-Z) you don't necessarily have that barrier[0]
Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me - we should just allow Russians apply for EU/EEC country's visas outside Russia. If someone wants to not take part in a war, we should be making that easier for them as much as possible not harder or more dangerous :-/
[0] - I don't think it's easy but it's certainly a couple of levels easier than it is for those who left.
I have (had?) a lot of friends there, some of whom have emigrated permanently, some have moved here to Kazakhstan when Putin declared his "partial mobilization", and have returned when it was declared over (although it isn't over legally…) If you haven't spoken up publicly against the war or did anything else that might endanger you personally, it has been quite safe to return to the country for the past few months. Of course, this could change in a moment — when rumors of upcoming mobilization started, my friends had less than a day to leave the country safely before the border service started selectively checking documents against mobilization lists.
> Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me - we should just allow Russians apply for EU/EEC country's visas outside Russia
I haven't seen this sentiment outside of the few remaining oppositional Russian news outlets yet. I guess politicians will do politicians' things, and chauvinism sells better than compassion.
I was trying to make sense of this sentence and only understood you were upset with me once I read my comment back. It looks like you’ve parsed what I said as “we should only issue visas to Russians who left” but I meant “we should simply issue visas who left”. The word “just” is overloaded and makes it a little ambiguous :)
I think only a really ignorant person would think someone who deserves to be punished because of their nationality or country of residence.
The current Kazakh leadership certainly seems to be intent on balancing Chinese, Russian and Western influences. In the future, possibly even South Asian influences.
It makes sense; Kazakhstan is a huge country, can't be easily subdued by force, so diplomacy is the name of the game, and it pays to be "an expensive bride" to multiple suitors. Especially when accounting for Kazakh natural resources.
I was thinking about the same thing a few days ago. One of the most interesting takeaways from this war is how soft power is very underrated, and lack of any soft power whatsoever is one of the reasons behind Russia's problems.
Russia has spend billions to gain soft power by hosting the 2018 world cup, the winter Olympics etc.
However the only "soft power" that has actually worked for Russia are their hundreds of thousands of social media disinfo sockpuppet accounts. They have convinced half of India, Nigeria, Hungary and Kentucky that Ukraine created COVID-19.
I think they count as soft power, but on the energy front, everyone (even Europe itself) completely overestimated how strong it was. Russia very much expected that energy dependency would keep Europe out of the conflict, even if it would put them on a path towards breaking that dependency in the long term. No one seemed to truly expect that the reaction would be so strong that it'd take less than a year to mostly eliminate that dependency.
In fact that went very poorly. They cut off gas to Europe in an attempt to freeze them and make them come to the bargaining table, but Europe responded very strongly and largely still supports Ukraine. The winter was even very mild. In cutting off the crutch, Russia forced Europe to go cold turkey instead of delaying it for a decade like they wanted to. Now Russia has to settle for selling the gas to other places at a steep discount, and Europe may never buy Russian gas again.
There's even a fun parallel to draw with the floating LNG terminals off the coast and WWII floating harbors for Normandy
True, but presumably because of the fear of losing energy supply, Europe chose _not_ to react to earlier provocations, including the invasion of the Crimea.
Yes, the whole salami slice expansion method seems to be designed, to use other diplomats as an abblative layer for empire expansion. Basically using your oponents wish for peace to slowly expand creeping.
And there is a whole diplomat generation standing by to be useful idiots again if not an example is placed like a statue every 3 generations.
I'm not saying you are wrong but why stop here? Why are the ruling guys stupid? Why do stupid guys get to rule?
I also am not sure stupidity is binary or all encompassing. I think they must be doing something right to be rulers to a country. Why do russian citizen take it? Maybe that's where stupid is the final answer, but maybe not.
As for international relations, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that everyone tries to project their own logic to others and being mostly wrong about it.
russia does not work according to the logic that France and Germany want to project onto it.
China does not work according to the logic US and Germany want to project onto it.
US and EU don't work according to the logic China and russia want to project onto it.
Ukraine does not work like EU, US and muscovy project their logic onto it.
This seems to be a weakspot of alot of ideological groups in the west(left/right) but also in the east(ccp), the assumption that one can just "sing" a version of reality into beeing by loudness. What is usually archieved is a placation act, by which the lower status parties involved pretends to kotau, but then gets on with its own life in its own style, with the calmed priesthood.
Its a very strange state of affairs. For objective, measurable scientific reality to be experienced, this process is completely orthogonal. Its better to know what is, even if unpleasant or stressfull, then only to find out at the breaking point?
If you have the power to force people to pretend a lie is the truth and behave accordingly, it doesn't matter if they accept it.
A few weeks ago, millions of Americans believed their government was at war with alien spacecraft, or an invasion of Chinese balloons. That was reality. Now that reality has been flipped off like a light switch, and a new reality turned on. As Karl Rove once said "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too."
People don't experience objective, measurable scientific reality, they experience a subjective hyperreality as the sum of signals from corporate media, pop culture and disinformation agents (including their own media and government.) This is what the whole "post truth" theory is about - not that objective reality can be manufactured, but that power comes from manipulating the perception of reality.
And eventually, many people will believe it. Humans are not rational beings that consider truth by the most mathematically precise and logically sound methods available, we are emotional beings driven by the need to square the circles of our lives by any means necessary. That's how propaganda and great lies work. It's how innocent people can enter an interrogation and come out convinced of the narrative of their guilt, to the point of having fabricated memories of it.
Russia has a nearly unbroken 150-200 year history of tyrannical government (sometimes in just the classical sense of power vested in a single individual, but often in the more modern sense where oppression is added to that). Sometimes there have been rebellions, but always the end result is the same in Russia: power resides in a single individual. Most other countries, east, west, and other, put up more resistance to the kinds of power structures Russia historically has had.
It's not projecting to postulate that maybe, just maybe, Russians (in aggregate, individual exceptions likely exist) are just okay with that.
> It's not projecting to postulate that maybe, just maybe, Russians (in aggregate, individual exceptions likely exist) are just okay with that.
just like germans were ok with nazis; italians, spanish, portuguese, with fascists; americans, brits, dutch, french, with slave owners
i mean honnestly, is russia worst than the nato country turkey? not to mention the faithful western ally saudi arabia? is donbas really that different from kosovo? who are we kidding with this virtue hypocricy
i fear that by the time people in large become sober about this hypocricy it will be too late and world will only become more polarized
how fitting as a response to what i just wrote to post a link to an anglo saxon lecturing slavs about their history and what "rusophobia" really means
but maybe Snyder is right. maybe all these rusophobic, racist statements are made by russian state agents maskarading as hn readers to show russians that their imperial war against ukraine is justified
and then again. shame on russia. US or UK never played the victim when pursuing their imperial ambissions
Well the power structure has never changed bar a short period after USSR colapse than people gladly elected another strong man who shifted back to the same arrangment that was in place for centuries. You have a figure head (Tsar, General Secretery etc.) who holds all the power and appoints regional managers to rule a particular area. The expansionist agenda is always the key to the ideology.
Being russian is not a race, just a passport type. They have a lot of blonde blue eyed people on the west (courtesy of vikings raping and killing those areas for centuries), brown, black haired, asian in the east (courtesy of mongols doing exactly the same), typical muslim visage on the south. Basically all mixtures apart from Africans.
Also, being russian is sort of lifestyle and comes with certain mindset, as internet memes documented darn too well in past decades.
As for OP's remark, its harsh but not incorrect, same happened to most enslaved nations. Unless freedom was won by bloody mass revolution and whole movememnt had some momentum, tribes and nations who suddenly gained freedom know very little what to actually do with it, and mess up quite a few things in transition. I've seen it first hand in eastern Europe, as soon as russians moved away from their decades long enslaving occupation.
I am ethnically Russian, and I have never held Russian citizenship (and have no desire to), and also have never lived there. You're just waving hands around trying to cover your *-cisms. Next you'll be telling us that Russians do not exist (you're already basically saying that). Now, who does that one remind me of, let me think...
I recognize that I live in a bubble and have a small circle of friends, but neither I, nor any one of them adhere to that stereotype you've mentioned that is supposedly required to "be Russian".
lol this is so stupid. being russian is as much an ethnicity as it is a nationality. if you make derisive prejudicial comments about an ethnic group that is racism
With that logic, you can't say ever any critical remark about a group of people (since they can self-identify as ethnicity XYZ and who are you to say otherwise), because it all gets siphoned into 'that's racism' outrage. If anything, it should be labeled 'ethnicism', in fact thats a proper word so lets be factual.
What about, instead of this totalitarian auto-censorship outrages in anonymous online forums, we discuss actual topics? I wasn't bashing russians specifically mind you, rather pointing out that generally nations that got their freedom way too fast then didn't know how to handle such freedom well. Collapse of CCCP created a massive sphere of such countries. As somebody coming form such a nation and lived during such times, I have unfortunately quite a bit of experience in this regard
I don't "self-identify" as anyone, I have a birth certificate issued by the Kazakh government that plainly identifies me as ethnically Russian. Since the beginning of 2022, that has been enough to receive limitless amounts of vitriol and death threats from people such as yourself.
ops remark that russians have a brainwashed slave mentality is plain-as-day racist. you saying that its harsh but true is also racist. you saying that being russian is somehow a lifestyle choice also makes it very hard to take you seriously
> As somebody coming form such a nation and lived during such times, I have unfortunately quite a bit of experience in this regard
Kazakhstan is as authoritarian as Russia was before 2022. They'll pretend there is some conflict with Putin while still supplying sanctioned goods to Russia and serving as banking gateway to bypass financial sanctions.
Russia doesn’t seem very interested in soft power either. Under Putin they seem more interested in violence, helping some local insurgents, installing strong men.
Even in Ukraine previously sympathetic Ukrainian officials in Ukraine reported getting cold calls from Russians telling them they better fall in line and threatened them. You would think it would be easier to throw them a bone / bribe… but nope.
They don’t seem to understand much outside the bullying sphere.
It is not a coincidence that 2 out of 4 of Russia's "separatist commanders" in eastern Ukraine were killed because of "infighting" between 2014 and 2022.
Yes, hopefully some of the federated republics will start civil wars to break away from the Russian empire. Continue the disintegration process that started in 1991.
Hoping that a nuclear power breaks apart is a nightmare. This is true for states like Pakistan but when you have a stockpile in the thousands and a nuclear logistical distribution like Russia it is nearly guarantee that we have several (terroristic) nuclear explosions over the next decades and probably half a dozen rogue states more.
And do not assume that this is a peaceful transition. Putin is very much concerned about the integrity of Russia.
You can draw a straight line from the USSR breaking up, to Ukraine giving away their nuclear weapons via the Budapest Memorandum, to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (which was a signatory). States are going to be less likely to give up their nuclear weapons, even with treaties, because treaties can be easily broken.
What is not yet visible, but might be a bringer of future conflict, is the many turk nations that could form a federation of there own. Turkey, Aserbaidschan , Turkmenistan and the Uighurs even, could form quite a mini-union themselves. If they manage for once to be at piece with all the other ethnicities they traditionally supressed similar to the russians.
Seems very unlikely to me. Between things like permissive action links, maintenance require to keep the bombs in working order, and expertise in how to use them, I would be dubious of rogue states getting them, wanting to use them, and actually being able to execute on them. Terrorists tend to have some sort of goal. Not just scary bad guys who want to blow stuff up. We typically see nukes are just used to establish legitimacy of authoritarian rulers via idle threats. using nukes is a losing move.
Putin is only concerned about integrity of his own political power and physical body. There is bunch of regions and cities in government databases that was never ever under any kind of military control. Russia is literally have imaginary state border.
Concern does not equal the ability to prevent or master a situation. Putin was also concerned with aquiring ukraine. Between that dictator impersonating aparatschik, the ground is liquifying as we speak.
The Bailiffs' Service of the Republic of Kazakhstan informs that the property of TsENKI (Center for the Operation of Ground-based Space Infrastructure), located in Kazakhstan, has been seized. The company, which is a subsidiary of the state-owned Roscosmos, is prohibited from withdrawing material assets and assets from Kazakhstan. The travel ban has also been extended to the head of the unit - he cannot leave Kazakhstan until the end of investigative actions.
The ban on the use of resources and financial transactions, as well as the instability of negotiating positions in general, slows down the priority area of work at Baikonur — the construction of a new launch pad for the Soyuz-5 rocket. Such a kind of "weightlessness" can turn into a financial "black hole" — 62 billion rubles were spent on the rocket, which may not fly anywhere due to the lack of a launch pad. The joint project "Baiterek" can also, apparently, put an end to, as well as to the whole idea of replacing the Ukrainian "Zenit" with its own development.
The main reason for such actions, many call "incorrect behavior" and harsh statements of the new head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov. Back in 2022, when it came to postponing the construction period for six months, he criticized a lot of delays in launching the launch pad, in particular, the Minister of Communications of the Republic of Kazakhstan Bagdat Musin, who is engaged in space in Kazakhstan.
Bagdat Musin, for his part, calls Yuri Borisov's criticism a "diplomatic miscalculation." Our sources explained that Mr. Musin uses the situation for his own PR. It is obvious that he has quite good skills of "undercover diplomacy". This is evidenced by his rapid growth on the career ladder, as well as a tendency to excessive theatrical attacks. Our people love politicians who show Russia their independence, and Musin is happy to play the independence card for the public once again.
Despite the fact that cooperation in the field of space is beneficial for both countries, it is not clear why Bagdat Batyrbekovich is trying to drive a wedge between Tokayev and Putin. Moreover, he uses various methods to denigrate Yuri Borisov. Sources of kz4. news express concerns that the actions of our minister may really lead to disagreements, which will primarily affect our economy and the development of the research base.
The actions of officials can turn into a serious blow to the entire bilateral space and research program. There is still no substitute for Baikonur, which has a unique geographical location. Maybe officials should calm down their personal ambitions in such a turbulent time, or go to the aggravation of the conflict. Please write in the comments what you think about this issue.
I don't find it appropriate to reproduce the material here, when it is readily available and everybody using this site know how to use a transalte service to translate a website.
I've been wanting to visit Baikonur for years, that and the nuclear testing facility at Semipalatinsk. I suspect the Baikonur portion of the trip will have to wait. [1, 2]
The land at Baikonur itself is leased to the Russians who have to okay tourist visits and at this point I suspect that's not easy especially given at least the title of the article above (which for me is not loading).
Those sources I've found report that Kazakhstani bailiffs put an arrest to Russian property (basically they can't move it out of the country) and forbade some manager to leave country as well. I'm not sure if English meaning of word seizure includes those actions, I thought that seizure is more like expropriation and that's not what happening here.
I think that's not serious. It's either some politics or just bureaucracy. While Kazakhstan is not fully supporting Russia, turning away from it seems like an economic suicide.
> While Kazakhstan is not fully supporting Russia, turning away from it seems like an economic suicide.
Obviously they're not going to cut all ties, but it's a good time for Kazakhs (or any other ex-Soviet population still in the Russian orbit) to renegotiate contracts. The bear is in a position of weakness both on diplomatic, economic, and military terms.
Possibly that's a "lien" then rather than seizure?
> A claim upon a part of another's property that arises because of an unpaid debt related to that property and that operates as an encumbrance on the property until the debt is satisfied.
Nah, we in NATO don’t blame landlocked countries with small economies for having, well, ambiguous relations with nearby Russia. It’s the places that have a choice, like Serbia, India, and Hungary, that are at risk of moving themselves onto our list of geopolitical rivals.
Oh, come on. The only reason you have not destroyed our economy with sanctions yet is because your oil companies have deep investments in our oil industry in western parts of the country. Additionally we cover about 50% of the world's uranium supply. Even before the war started, our khan put more than 300 people in the ground to preserve his rule (many of them random women and children; and that's according to official sources whom everyone considers to be seriously biased), and your politicians looked the other way because it didn't tip the scales far enough.
but 40% of import is. I live in KZ and in a recent talk my fellow Russian expats mentioned this topic. I checked what items in my rented apartment are made in Russia. Except clothes, shoes and computer devices and furniture, which is produced locally, everything in the kitchen is from Russia: tea, porriges, tools (like plastic funnel, which is even from Moscow!), even a can of salt is from there. Just 2-3 were not from RU.
For example, IKEA stores in Russia ordered furniture by their designs from local makers. This was imported in KZ. Now they're gone, and IKEA items are either brought from Turkey, or the Russian factories started making something roughly similar, but it's not branded/quality controlled.
Some imports (from China or even Turkey) went via Russian logistics as well, and only the last year started to be re-routed.
Since Tokayev became a president, IMO relations between Russia and Kazakhstan are getting worse. Of course especially after invasion. But Kazakhstan and Russia are far from enemies, at least for the time being. They have deep economic ties. As I see it, Kazakhstan tries to build more independent economy but it's not really easy to do so, when the only real alternative is China which is completely foreign and many Kazakhs are afraid of Chinese invasion (not military, but economical, buying land and so on). And of course it's kind of hard to defend huge country with the population of 18 million. So military alliance with strong neighbour is kind of necessary in this situation and Russia provides one.
Kazakhstan's economy is dominated by the oil and gas industry. If anything, it competes with Russia economically. As it develops alternative transportation networks, economic independence from Russia will benefit it, not harm it.
As far as I know, major (overwhelming?) part of Kazakhstan oil and gas is transported via Russian pipes. They were used as a tool to press on Kazakhstan in the past. Yes, alternative networks are being developed, but that takes a lot of time.
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However it's not like they just seized a Soyuz rocket or crates of rocket engines, or even a train load of rocket fuel and they're holding it in lieu of payment now.
Kazakhstan in recent days has been on record saying that they intend to take small steps towards further independence from Russia.