Kuchma's colleague: The answer to the rupture of space contracts will be the reorientation of the Russian Federation towards China
Mirny - Kyiv, July 16 (Navigator, Sergey Rulev) - Russia is refocusing on cooperation in the space sector with China, as Ukrainian enterprises, under the pretext of a crisis in relations between the two countries, refuse to fulfill contracts.
This was stated by a colleague of the Ukrainian rocket scientist Leonid Kuchma, Anatoly Simonov, who headed the Experimental Test Center in 1988-89. A Navigator correspondent met with Simonov in Mirny on the 55th anniversary of the opening of the Plesetsk test site.
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“Let's remember what kind of cooperation there was under the Soviet Union? In all the Union republics, especially in the Baltic states, in some parts of Uzbekistan, and in Kazakhstan, there were a lot of enterprises that were part of the general cooperation of Cosmos. But just the other day, our Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin announced the contacts that had already taken place with the PRC, the Mars projects and other space exploration projects will be decided jointly by our countries. We will be able to use the economic potential of the PRC, we now have excellent relations with them, I believe that a breakthrough is on the way. And Ukraine will have to decide for itself whether it wants cooperation with us; at the moment they refuse to fulfill even previously concluded contracts with us,” the expert said.
Simonov commented on the future of space cooperation between Ukraine and the Russian Federation as follows:
“I’ll tell you a few names, and I think you’ll confirm them for me. Those people in the leadership of the Military Space Forces of the Russian Defense Ministry, in the leadership of Roscosmos, who are of Ukrainian origin - Golovko, Ostapenko, Maydanovich, Nestechuk - are all ethnic Ukrainians, all immigrants from Ukraine. Considering that my wife is also Ukrainian, and I am a Russian citizen and a test engineer at the cosmodrome, then, probably, our state wants to severely punish crests in this way, for this purpose it puts them in the most difficult leadership positions and assigns them all generals of the Russian army.” .
“As you remember, Chernomyrdin was the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, and when he was asked how he felt about Ukrainians in the government, he said: “... how many of those Russians are there?” – Simonov recalled the joke.
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