Active Conflicts & News Megathread August 27, 2025

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[u/MilesLongthe3rd]

Another Russian company is in a dire financial situation, but not one I was expecting.

https://www.moscowtimes.eu/2025/08/27/zadel-proeden-situatsiya-kriticheskaya-razrabotavshee-vse-raketi-sssr-predpriyatie-roskosmosa-soobschilo-ofinansovom-krahe-a172832

"The backlog is gone, the situation is critical." Roscosmos enterprise that developed all the USSR's rockets has announced its financial collapse

RKK Energia, the parent enterprise of Roscosmos, founded by Sergei Korolev and which developed all the key Soviet launch vehicles, including Vostok and the still-flying Soyuz, is on the verge of collapse and may be closed. As reported by Gazeta, CEO Igor Maltsev announced this in a mailing to employees on the occasion of the enterprise's 79th anniversary. "The situation is critical: multimillion-dollar debts, interest on loans are eating up the budget, many processes are ineffective, a significant part of the team has lost motivation and a sense of shared responsibility," Maltsev said in his statement. "The groundwork laid by Sergei Pavlovich [Korolev] and developed by our chief designers - Mishin, Glushko, Semenov - has been exhausted by now," Maltsev states. He also writes that "all major projects <…> have missed deadlines" and calls on his colleagues to stop "lying to themselves and others" about the true state of affairs and to start "fighting for the enterprise."

Maltsev does not rule out "closing the corporation" due to "the inability to function normally" and pay salaries and calls on everyone to "discipline" and "coordinated action." He admits that "pulling the company out of the realm of miracles." Founded in 1946 and creating the first artificial Earth satellite, as well as Soviet stations that reached the Moon, Venus and Mars, RSC Energia has accumulated 10.5 billion rubles in net losses over the past 10 years. The company's total debt as of June 30, 2025, reached 168.4 billion rubles and has grown by 17%, or 25 billion rubles, since the beginning of the year. The crisis in the Russian space industry worsened after the start of the war, when Roscosmos fell under sanctions and lost almost all foreign customers.

By the end of 2024, it had carried out only 17 space launches, which was the minimum for Russia since the early 1960s - the era of Yuri Gagarin, when the USSR was the first to send a man into space. Russia is more than 8 times behind the United States, which launched 145 spacecraft into orbit, and four times behind China (68 launches), according to data from the Payloadspace portal. A quarter of a century ago, Russia held a leading position in orbital launches: Roscosmos carried out more than 30 launches per year, compared to 28 for the US, 12 for Europe, and 5 for China (according to data for 2000). But since then, the US has increased the number of launches by 5.2 times, and China by almost 14 times. As a result, Russia has fallen to third place among space powers and is barely ahead of New Zealand, which carried out 13 launches last year.

[u/FriedrichvdPfalz → u/MilesLongthe3rd]

The Russian civil space program had been critically dependent on financial support from the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Initially rationalized in the West as an investment that would reduce International Space Station costs and prevent proliferation of missile technology by unemployed Russian engineers, temporary US financial support quickly became an expectation. Even after the Russian economy found itself awash in oil revenues in the early 2000s, Roscosmos officials pled poverty and insisted on renegotiation of financial arrangements with NASA at every turn.[8]

Under President Putin, funding flowed into reconstituting the GLONASS satellite navigation constellation and numerous new military space and missile projects, but the civil space program was expected to support itself from “off-budget” sources. The primary source of such revenues under Putin was cooperative agreements, which entailed international partners effectively paying Russia to “cooperate” on various projects. While there were quite a few partners willing to pay for Russian space services, it was NASA’s big budget and devotion to the International Space Station (ISS) partnership that made them the primary source of funding from “international cooperation.” The 2002 US decision to rely on Russia for ISS crew transportation, rather than build a US crew return vehicle, was a godsend for Roscosmos.

As the political relationship soured, especially after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Roscosmos could continue to raise the price for Soyuz seats while its leader Dmitry Rogozin continued to bite the hand that fed him. Whether Russian leaders were too wedded to the cash flow (and the opportunities for embezzlement) or simply underestimated the capabilities of US industry, Roscosmos appeared to be unprepared when the SpaceX Crew Demo-2 mission succeeded in the summer of 2020. The $90 million Russia received for the launch of astronaut Kate Rubins on Soyuz MS-17 in October 2020 would be the last of the easy money.[9]

Source

There were corresponding reports from2024 and 2023 that outlined the ongoing crisis at Roscosmos.

Beyond launch problems and coolant leaks, Russia’s civil space program faces another problem: the ISS. For the past quarter of a century, the station has provided a critical tie between the US and Russian space programs, but that’s winding down, along with plans to retire the giant structure altogether. NASA is investing in next-generation commercial space stations, with modules scheduled to arrive in orbit as early as 2030. Russia has no role in those commercial concepts, nor in China’s new Tiangong station. (...)

Pavel Luzin, senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank focused on China, Russia, and Eurasia, is skeptical; he’s not aware of new space station models, crewed spacecraft, or launch vehicles in the works. It would be optimistic for Russia to even launch a new station in the 2030s, he adds. “Russia is not the Soviet Union,” says Luzin, who is also a visiting scholar at the Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. “Russia will be able to make some large vehicles and Soyuz spacecraft. Russia will be able to launch some satellites. But it will not be an advanced space power. It will not be making steps beyond low Earth orbit.” (...)

Source

Simply put, the Russian space program was in poor shape before the second invasion and got in worse shape afterwards. But even without the war, there was a clear deadline on cooperation via the ISS and launches, as space stations became commercial or national and the US (specifically SpaceX) developed cheap launch capabilities. Beyond that, Russia just wasn't an economic superpower that could afford a proper, modern, civilian space program.The Roscosmos budget for 2020 is just one-third of its 2014 level, at $1.7bn, and is far below NASA’s budget of $22.6bn.

This report is a good, more detailed summary.

[u/throwdemawaaay → u/FriedrichvdPfalz]

Yeah, and beyond even losing NASA, they're now basically fenced out from launching EU and US commercial payloads.

I think Putin will likely just gut what's left of the civilian side and only support the remaining military capabilities he wants, but even there he's going to be severely under budget.

[u/roionsteroids → u/MilesLongthe3rd]

Energia is a tiny part of roscosmos these days, and doesn't even have a commercial business I think? They just design things for the state as only customer.

Wikipedia lists plans for an upcoming space station after the end of the ISS (which isn't super realistic to take on alone, but they made the plans for one anyway, might end up being a module of an international effort) and a super heavy launcher (also in low demand, for moon and beyond missions that don't exist yet, and likely won't appear anytime soon either).

By the end of 2024, it had carried out only 17 space launches, which was the minimum for Russia since the early 1960s

Objectively false, 2020, 2021 had fewer than 17 launches.

https://planet4589.org/space/stats/out/tab1a.txt

Not that the number is limited or even influenced much by Energia somehow?

What an odd article.