The Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for International Cooperation in Space, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation, Director General of the Roscosmos State Corporation Dmitry Rogozin comments:
1. However, the restrictions are illegal, as are all other sanctions previously imposed on Russian individuals and legal entities.
2. Restrictions are stupid because companies arbitrarily attributed to “military end users” are not and never have been “military end users”. For example, TsNIIMash is a leading scientific institute in the industry; includes the ISS Mission Control Center, with a group of NASA experts permanently present there. Don’t they know that there is nothing there that could connect this institute with military research? Or, for example, RSC Progress, which has also somehow entered this list of sanctions. This Samara company produces the legendary Soyuz-2 launch vehicles, with the help of which the Soyuz MS spacecraft has been leading American astronauts to the ISS for 10 years. Now it turns out that our American colleagues are ‘doing the trampoline’ again, and the first thing they did was spit into the Samara well. Isn’t it too early, colleagues, in case your ‘trampoline’ suddenly breaks down again and you have to satisfy your passion for the 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 especially on the ISS.
Therefore, in order to preserve our common goal, I demand that the American government immediately lift these sanctions against our companies. We will assume that this is a ‘misunderstanding’.