Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 3, 2025

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

Just before his trip to the Far East, it was revealed in the Russian media that Vladimir Putin’s space program was in a financial crisis

The Russian dictator went to China to help advance its ambitions for global hegemony, at the Aug. 30-31 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, and then as a star guest for Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Sept. 3 massive military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the World War Two defeat of Japan — for which it did very little.

On Aug. 26 the Russian website Gazetta.ru reported that Igor Maltsev, the CEO of the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Russia’s main rocket developer and producer, gave an address to employees on its 79th anniversary in which he predicted the company’s “probable closure.”

Energia was founded in 1946 by the “father” of Russia’s space program Sergei Korolev, and has since been responsible for the design and manufacture of Russian space launchers including its failed N-1 Moon launcher, unmanned Moon probes, its major space stations, and cooperation on the International Space Station (ISS).

Maltsev reportedly told employees, “the groundwork created by Sergei Pavlovich [Korolev] and developed by our general designers — Mishin, Glushko, Semenov — has been exhausted to date…[and in recent years], promises for all major projects have turned out to be unfulfilled, all deadlines have been missed.”

He added that, “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.”

Over the last ten years Energia has accumulated over $130 million in debt and carries a total debt of about $2 billion.

Gazetta.ru said that Maltsev, “…did not rule out the possibility of ‘closing the corporation, the inability to function normally, pay wages, not to mention creating products.’”

Then in an Aug. 28 post on the Russian social media site Telegram, a harsh assessment was offered by Nikolay Sevastyanov, the former leader of Energia from 2005 to 2007, and then again from 2019 to 2020.

He claimed he was dismissed from leading Energia in 2007 after having turned around the company’s fortunes, and then noted:

“Due to the inept management of Energia in the period 2008-2018, commercial projects failed, gigantic losses were incurred, which were hung on loans, ‘sucking out’ all the profit from current activities. But, most importantly, the failure to fulfill the state order began.”

He took the helm again in 2019, but,

“The situation turned out to be much more complicated and was aggravated by the fact that the conditions for managing Energia changed. It became a structure of the State Corporation Roscosmos, and the head of Energia was deprived of the authority to independently form the company’s structure, essentially becoming a hostage of [Russian Space Agency] Roscosmos officials.”

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  Russia’s space program pain could be China’s gain