Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for International Cooperation in Space, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation, General Director of the Roscosmos State Corporation Dmitry Rogozin comments:
1. The restrictions are illegal, however, as any other sanctions imposed against Russian individuals and legal entities earlier.
2. The restrictions are stupid because the companies arbitrarily attributed to ‘military end users’ are not and have never been the ‘military end users’. For example, TsNIIMash is the industry leading scientific institute; it includes the ISS Mission Control Center, with a group of NASA specialists permanently present there. Don’t they not know there is nothing there that could connect this institute with military research? Or, for example, RSC Progress, which somehow also got into this sanctions list. This Samara enterprise manufactures the legendary Soyuz-2 launch vehicles, with the help of which the Soyuz MS spacecraft has been taking American astronauts to the ISS for 10 years already. Now, it turns out that our American colleagues have their ‘trampoline working’ again, and the first thing they did is spit into the Samara well. Isn’t it too early, colleagues, in case your ‘trampoline’ breaks again suddenly and you will have to satisfy your passion for space from our well again?
3. These sanctions are harmful, because they will create additional obstacles and irritations in such an important cooperation between Russians and Americans in space and on the ISS in particular.
Therefore, for the sake of preserving our common cause, I demand that the US Government immediately lift these sanctions against our enterprises. We will assume that this is a ‘misunderstanding’.
