MOSCOW, June 18. /ITAR-TASS/. The former head of Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, has died, press secretary of the Federal Space Agency Irina Zubareva told ITAR-TASS.
“Vladimir Alexandrovich died at the age of 58 after an illness,” she said.
As ITAR-TASS correspondent was previously told by a source familiar with the situation, the ex-head of Roscosmos died in one of the clinics in Israel, where he was being treated for oncology.
Earlier, in March 2012, Popovkin was admitted to the Burdenko Hospital for several days. It was reported that the reasons for the deterioration of his health were caused by “prolonged physical and emotional stress, including frequent business trips with jet lag and intense work.”
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin expressed his condolences. The Deputy Prime Minister, who is on an official visit to India, wrote words of sympathy to the relatives of Vladimir Popovkin on the microblog on Twitter. “Vladimir Aleksandrovich Popovkin, the former head of Roscosmos, died after a serious illness. My sincere condolences to his family and friends,” the Deputy Prime Minister wrote.
Russian Defense Minister Army General Sergei Shoigu also expressed condolences to the relatives of Vladimir Popovkin. “I received the news of the sudden death of Army General Vladimir Alexandrovich Popovkin with deep sorrow,” Shoigu said.
“His fate is an example of selfless service to the Fatherland, its Armed Forces. Vladimir Alexandrovich’s entire life path is an example of loyalty to his chosen cause and professional duty,” the minister emphasized. “During his service and work in all positions, Vladimir Alexandrovich treated his assigned work with high responsibility, made full use of his rich life and service experience, knowledge and organizational skills in the implementation of military development plans and space programs."
Shoigu noted that “Popovkin’s name is forever inscribed in the history of the Fatherland, which he selflessly served until his last breath.” The bright memory of him will forever be kept in our hearts. On behalf of the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and on my own behalf, I offer my most sincere condolences to his family and friends Vladimir Aleksandrovich Popovkin,” said the head of the military department.
Biography of Vladimir Popovkin
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Popovkin was born on September 25, 1957 in Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, into a military family. In 1966, his father was transferred from Tajikistan to Russia and the family moved to Kalinin, where Vladimir studied at a physics and mathematics school.
In 1979 he graduated from the Military Engineering Institute named after. A.F. Mozhaisky with the rank of lieutenant. After graduation, he was assigned to the Baikonur Cosmodrome. In seven years, he worked his way up from an engineer, a department head, to a team leader at launch complex No. 1 (“Gagarin launch”).
In 1986 he graduated with honors from the Military Academy. F.E. Dzerzhinsky, received the military rank of lieutenant colonel. He was assigned to work in the Office of the Chief of Space Facilities (UNKS) of the USSR Ministry of Defense. In 1991 he was transferred to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. He held the positions of senior operator, group head, deputy head of a department, and in 1999 became head of a department of the Main Operations Directorate.
After the creation of the Russian Space Forces in July 2001, he was appointed to the position of chief of staff - first deputy commander of the Space Forces, and in March 2004 became commander of the Space Forces. In February 2005, he received the rank of Colonel General. In July 2008, he was appointed to the position of Chief of Armaments of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation. In February 2009, he was awarded the rank of Army General.
On March 30, 2009, he was dismissed from active military service and transferred to the rank of federal civil servants while retaining the position of chief of armaments of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation. From June 21, 2010 to April 29, 2011, he served as First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation.
From April 29, 2011 to October 10, 2013, he was the head of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).
Doctor of Technical Sciences. Full member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics named after. K.E. Tsiolkovsky, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences. The class rank of Active State Advisor of the Russian Federation, 1st class, was awarded in 2013. He was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III and IV degrees, For Military Merit, and the medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, II degree.
Vladimir Popovkin is survived by his wife, Natalya Rafilyevna Grigorieva (born in 1967), and two daughters, Natalya Vladimirovna (born in 1980) and Anastasia Sergeevna Grigorieva (adopted daughter, born in 1988).
The porn business is a dangerous routine that has sucked in many worthy and strong men. The story of the ex-porn star Anna Vedishcheva and the head of Roscosmos Vladimir Popovkin (not only the ex-star, but even the deceased) amused many, but they just didn’t bother to get to the bottom of the shark’s truth, just like the employees of Roscosmos.
Anna Vedishcheva worked as a prostitute... Oh, no, it was called an escort. More precisely, a model. In general, she previously worked at Carmen Models as a dancer and escort - http://www.carmenmodels.ru/models/2/71/index.php
But then Vedishcheva’s career simply skyrocketed. Like a rocket. Thanks to Popovkin.
Representatives of the old space guard with whom I spoke believe that Popovkin’s career as head of Roscosmos should have ended after the memorable story of a drunken brawl at an internal departmental corporate party in March 2012. As the media wrote, the head of Roscosmos got into a fight with one of his colleagues out of jealousy towards his press secretary Anna Vedishcheva, who had recently worked as a fashion model. Popovkin ended up with a traumatic brain injury in the hospital named after. Burdenko, and the official reason for hospitalization, announced by the department’s press service, was “overwork.” Well, what kind of missiles are we talking about here?!
But first things first.
Former model Anna Vedishcheva became press secretary of the head of Roscosmos
Its new head, Vladimir Popovkin, began updating the composition of Roscosmos with the press service. A few days ago, Alexey Kuznetsov was appointed its head, previously Popovkin’s adviser at the Ministry of Defense. The former model Anna Vedishcheva became the manager’s press secretary. Before joining Roscosmos, Vedishcheva did not work in PR structures and was not involved in space topics.
“Ruslan Aleksandrovich Sokolov, the former general director of the Zvezda television and radio company, recommended me for this job,” Anna Vedishcheva told Marker. “Before this, I had never dealt with topics close to space.” Before joining Roscosmos, Vedishcheva worked as a presenter of documentary programs on the Zvezda TV channel. “Before Zvezda, I worked as a senior editor at the Fisheries Research Institute, producing articles and books,” recalls Vedishcheva. “I’ve never done public relations before.”
According to Marker's source in Roscosmos, the most popular Internet resource among agency employees this week was the website of the Carmen Models agency, which offers models and dancers for photo-video shooting and events. The website contains Anna Vedishcheva's portfolio, which contains photographs of her in lingerie and revealing poses. The comments to the portfolio indicate that Vedischeva’s body proportions are close to the recognized ideal - 86-60-90.
“The agency no longer works, I just can’t close the site,” explained the girl Anna, listed on the Carmen Models website as a contact person. Anna could not say anything about Vedischeva’s modeling activities. Vedishcheva herself also does not want to remember her modeling career: “This is my personal hobby, and it is connected with events of a very long time that do not relate to my professional qualities.”
Everyone dreamed of becoming astronauts, everyone... except the astronauts. Knights of space and monks of defense affairs are looking for other ideals in life, dreaming of other heights. Two unsuccessful marriages and difficult work brought the head of Roscosmos to a shameful incident, which made his faithful companion Anna Vedishcheva famous throughout the country. The lacerations on Vladimir Popovkin’s head frightened even seasoned neurosurgery doctors. They sewed the long-suffering little head of the country's chief cosmonaut for a long time and quite painfully. Popovkin endured, gritting his teeth. Two things helped me survive the hellish pain: a hefty dose of alcohol in the blood and the breasts of the fairy goddaughter, and also the porn star Anna Vedishcheva. It is the fairy cross that the ex-porn star is called in Roscosmos. At the behest of Vedishcheva, such miracles are happening in Roscosmos that it’s time to rename this creation into something more threatening.
But let's return to Popovkin's lacerations... Roscosmos press secretary Alexei Kuznetsov first stated that Popovkin fell from the stairs, but later retracted his comment, citing the fact that he did not have the information. Literally a day later, Roscosmos explained lacerations to the head up to seven centimeters in length as “prolonged physical and emotional stress” that Popovkin experienced. “The cause of the sudden short-term deterioration in health, according to medical experts, was prolonged physical and emotional stress, caused, among other things, by frequent business trips with changes in time zones and disruption of the usual rhythm of work, preparation and holding of a number of events, in particular, the final meeting of the board agency for 2011, and a number of other similar circumstances.” It is strange that until now medicine has not known about the true nature of lacerations. Only Roscosmos kept the secret of their origin - emotional stress and frequent long business trips. That's it - no comment.
The day after, March 7, Popovkin’s subordinate was admitted to the clinic. Deputy General Director of FSUE Zvezdny Alexander Paramonov was diagnosed with a concussion and a broken nose. He told doctors that he was injured during a fight in the building of the Federal Space Agency on Shchepkina Street, 42. However, the official denies the connection between this incident and the hospitalization of the head of the department.
Below we present the story of a source in Roscosmos, who described in detail the drunken massacre in the VIP hall of Roscosmos. The head of the department immediately after the meeting had an argument with one of the employees, and the barmaid rushed to separate them. At this time, Popovkin was hit on the head with a bottle. His opponent suffered less. The quarrel took place over Popovkin’s personal press secretary, Anna Vedishcheva. The fact of a head injury from a bottle was also confirmed by doctors who found several glass shards stuck in the patient’s head. It was necessary to extract him some time after the examination, due to the impossibility of administering anesthesia due to an excess of alcohol in the blood of the “space cowboy”.
After the incident, Popovkin himself noted that he did not hold onto the position of head of Roscosmos, and his personal life should not be the subject of media discussion. “I am not only an official working for the benefit of the Motherland, but also a living person...”, the head of Roscosmos succinctly parried the journalists’ questions.
The main “space princess” leaves Popovkin’s former fiefdom, because of whom he got into trouble
After a change of leadership, employees of various ranks leave Roscosmos. Thus, it became known that the application for dismissal was written by the first deputy head of the department, Oleg Frolov. Earlier it was reported that Deputy Head of Roscosmos Alexander Lopatin decided to leave his post.
In addition, Roscosmos press secretary Anna Vedishcheva, whose arrival to serve in the department was at one time marked by a scandal, asked for dismissal. In particular, it turned out that before joining Roscosmos, Vedishcheva not only did not work in PR structures and was not involved in space topics, but also appeared on the Internet with rather candid photographs.
As the online newspaper Marker wrote, citing its sources in Roscosmos, the most popular Internet resource among agency employees in the week when Vedishcheva was hired was the website of the Carmen Models agency, which offers models and dancers for photo, video shooting and events. In particular, a portfolio was posted on the portal, including pictures in lingerie and revealing poses. The comments to the portfolio indicate that Vedischeva’s body proportions are close to the recognized ideal - 86-60-90.
Vedishcheva herself spoke reluctantly about her modeling career: “This is my personal hobby, and it is connected with events of a very long time that do not relate to my professional qualities.”
There was especially a lot of talk about Vedishcheva in March last year in connection with the incident when the head of Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, was hospitalized with a broken head. Many media outlets said that Popovkin was injured during a fight as a result of being hit on the head with a bottle. It was rumored that the cause of Popovkin’s quarrel with his subordinate was the former model, Roscosmos press secretary Anna Vedishcheva.
Vedishcheva herself said that Popovkin was injured as a result of a fall. “Vladimir Alexandrovich returned from a week-long business trip to Canada. Then, without adapting to our time zone, I immediately began preparing for a meeting of the agency board. And after it was carried out, at night, I felt bad, fell and hit my head,” Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted the press secretary of Roscosmos as saying.
Ode about the space battle between Deputy Director Paramonov and Roscosmos Director Popovkin
Sing, my buttons, flat buttons! Oh, beep, the fan is coming out of the case! I will write a poem about the passions of Moscow in the federal agency Roscosmos. As if on the occasion of a women's holiday, important guests gathered for dinner: oh, ministers of the presidential palace, and all sorts of necessary scientists, and designers of all sorts of satellites, GLONASS and compass engineers, and even a couple of hundred employees - led by the leadership of Roscosmos.
“Oh, sit down at the table, oh, we are glad to see you! Oh, we bought you some booze and food!” - this is how wonder woman Anna Vedishcheva greeted the guests in the assembly hall: the queen and the pride of Russia, and the head of the press service of the directorate - oh, she greeted the guests with a white breast, and in shorts from the latest collection, in a sundress with an open tummy, and bent over in bows, yes completely (as all her previous positions taught the techniques of erotica).
Oh, we won’t have to sit waiting for long! Raise your glasses quickly! General Popovkin himself, the head of the building, will say a toast about new technologies! The entire Russian scientific elite is sitting here with their eyes soft: cosmonauts with their relatives and friends, academicians of sciences with candidates, and officials with large shoulder straps, and bosses with flashy medals - they drink to the Burans and Protons, and to the Shuttles. The overseas people laugh: “We can even build rockets from unplaned boards in smoky factories! Because there is science in Russia! Because there is a culture in Russia!”
Oh, our director Popovkin is celebrating everything! Yes, it’s not fun for his subordinate - oh, his deputy director, Paramonova, is tormenting his brain with all his might: he doesn’t look at sturgeons with piglets, doesn’t dance in the middle of a feasting evening - he undresses Vedishcheva with his glances, even though there’s probably nothing to undress on her. And as they brought out the stewed deer, as the well-fed guests belched over the table, Popovkin suddenly asked Paramonov: why the hell did you put your hand in her panties?
An angry pause reigned over the table, the academicians and lecturers became silent: the Yauza River could be heard roaring, pouring shit underground into the sewers. And Paramonov stood up, looking down, and they heard Paramonov’s answer: “At least write crap about me in the order! At least cut my salary to two million! I’ll tell it all as it is to a senior official, who, like me, was warmed up with alcohol: I put my hand in the secretary’s panties out of great love, that’s the only reason! Because beauty and romance! Attraction of hearts and erection! Why are you looking at me, lips like a bow? And finally, what do you want, management?!”
Popovkin stood over the table in a white tunic, he swung the GLONASS module, and those gathered immediately saw how he hit Paramonov in the face! Paramonov stood up from the carpet flooring, rose to his full height in front of Popovkin, picked up a two-meter sturgeon from a dish, and spanked the director on the ass!
People jumped up from their seats, even the fat ones, and shouted in a crowd of obscenities. And the scientific elite chants: “Bitch, give it to him on the scoreboard, be a man!” The entire scientific fraternity was noisy. And the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences threw vegetables from the dish: “Punish the goat as it is, according to the rules!” Otherwise you're not a boy! You've finally become a pisser!” A wine glass, thrown by someone, hit my head, and a pineapple, partly with a prick, hit my jaw. Bitch, hit him already, you're a loser! Are you an academician or a yop chick? In the science of apparatus engineering, we’ll pour vodka for the mood, attach a couple of satellites to a chain, and go beat up travelers on the street! The scientists made a noise, shouted, ate ethyl alcohol with a cucumber, then took out the sharpened sharpeners and they started to get really crazy.
And we woke up in the morning in the dressing room - all in bandages and with broken muzzles. In a happy and fabulous mood: because they are brave, because they are proud, because they are brave and fearless, they proved to everyone around that they are not clowns, that gentlemen are very important in nature, that they are boys in nature, they didn’t piss off! Let the whole crowd of scientists, nah, the whole world, sit there in their washed-out pants - from America and Europe to Japan. Who cares, yop? Why didn’t you understand?
He may lose his post. The reason for his possible resignation is an ongoing series of failures in space. The most serious recent loss under the current head of Roscosmos was the Phobos-Grunt interplanetary station. On January 15, 2012, the station, worth 5 billion rubles, burned out in the dense layers of the atmosphere due to technical problems during launch. The atmosphere in the corridors of Roscosmos is also tense to the limit - more and more famous designers and scientists are openly criticizing Popovkin for ill-conceived decisions that could finally bury the domestic cosmonautics. Meanwhile, Vladimir Popovkin is full of optimism and voices more and more new plans for reforming the department. How these undertakings can end and whether the current head of Roscosmos will have time to bring them to life, the Our Version correspondent tried to understand.
There is a joke floating around the workshops and design bureaus of the Russian space industry today: “Russia has the largest Pacific constellation of satellites. No state has ever managed to sink so many new satellites in the Pacific Ocean.”…
The appointment of Mr. Vladimir Popovkin to the post of “chief of the Russian space program” in April 2011 was received by the space and near-space public without much enthusiasm. People from the Space Forces, which Popovkin headed for almost five years, were always treated with coolness in astronautics. And it’s not a matter of traditional class hostility between “jackets” and “boots”. The space forces, in fact, have always been only a supporting structure; the generals had only a very mediocre relationship with the development of new spacecraft and launch vehicles, not to mention scientific space research. At the same time, the domestic cosmonautics achieved its greatest success when at its helm were designers who were fanatically devoted to their work, who not only understood all the nuances of the industry, but were also able to generate bold ideas and charge people with their energy - this is not about Popovkin.
Skepticism was also added by Mr. Popovkin’s strange attitude towards the Russian defense industry, which he showed when he was the head of the Armaments of the Russian Armed Forces in 2010–2011. Popovkin kicked the domestic defense industry at every opportunity; among his epoch-making statements was a passage about the fact that it is easier and cheaper for the army to buy the German Leopard tank instead of the Russian T-90 (in fact, the Leopard costs 1.5 times more than the T-90) 90). However, for the failures of the state defense order of those years, experts were inclined to blame not only the Russian defense industry, but also their army customers, who systematically delayed the deadlines for drawing up and signing contracts and could not clearly determine the prices for the purchased weapons. Therefore, it is not surprising why, after Popovkin’s appointment as head of the Federal Space Agency, many in Roscosmos joked that Russian cosmonauts would fly into space on American technology. It looks like everything is going that way.
GLONASS is called a useless system
The most ambitious program for Russian cosmonautics over the past 20 years has been the launch of the GLONASS navigation system. In the 2000s, Popovkin was its main curator on the part of the Ministry of Defense, the main customer of the system. Let us recall that from 2001 to 2011, 116.9 billion rubles were allocated from the budget for the GLONASS Federal Target Program. Another 330 billion will be spent before 2020. Despite such colossal investments, which have already exceeded the costs of the Americans for the GPS system, GLONASS can only be called a conditionally working system - it has not been accepted by the Ministry of Defense. At the moment, there are 23 satellites in orbit instead of the promised 24 devices, many of which are already reaching the end of their service life. At the same time, the accuracy of GLONASS is 1.5 times inferior to the American GPS, although it was initially announced that it would be comparable in accuracy to its competitor. The biggest failure was the loss in December 2010 of three GLONASS-M satellites; due to abnormal operation of the Proton-M launch vehicle engine, three satellites fell into the Pacific Ocean. One of the main problems of putting the system into operation today is said to be the imperfection of the equipment's element base - Russia is not yet capable of producing modern microcircuits, while imported elements, which, as it now turns out, were purchased in China and Thailand, were not adapted to work in space conditions - and this results in technical glitches.It’s not just the military that sharply criticize Popovkin’s favorite brainchild. In February 2012, an order from the Ministry of Transport was issued, which obligated all civil aircraft in Russia to be equipped with domestic navigation equipment. By December 2012, the domestic navigation system was installed on 530 airplanes and helicopters, but experience in its use has shown that this thing is completely useless. The problem is that most aircraft are not equipped with flight navigation systems and the equipment cannot interact with navigation systems - tracking the aircraft with GLONASS signals is impossible. In addition, GLONASS does not fit into the navigation characteristics of world navigation standards. However, enormous amounts of money have already been spent on equipment.
Of course, Vladimir Popovkin, as one of the founding fathers of the navigation system, must bear responsibility for all the failures of GLONASS, but even a light analysis of his decisions as head of Roscosmos creates the opinion that Popovkin prefers to “turn the arrows” on other participants in the program rather than understand in the true reasons for failure.
Corruption scandals as a method of dealing with undesirables
It became very indicative conflict Vladimir Popovkin with the former general director of JSC Russian Space Systems (RSS), general designer of GLONASS Yuri Urlichich. On March 19, 2012, Popovkin, in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper, criticized the leadership of RKS. According to him, as a result of inspections initiated by Roscosmos, multi-million dollar thefts budget funds allocated by RKS in 2007–2010 for the development of the GLONASS system. Roscosmos handed over the inspection materials to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, investigators found that RKS sent budget money to the account of shell companies, and the actual work on orders was carried out by full-time RKS employees. According to investigators, the main laundering company was NPO KP CJSC. The total amount of funds stolen through this and other companies amounted to 565 million rubles. However, then the story of theft at RKS somehow died out on its own - the company’s managers continued to work in their posts. The scandal surrounding RKS flared up with renewed vigor in November 2012. The head of the Internal Affairs Directorate at the Moscow Metro, Igor Bozhkov (previously worked in the 4th Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was responsible for checking the RKS) reported that the scale of thefts in Russian space systems amounted to as much as 6.5 billion rubles. From the outside it all looked strange: it was unclear how the amount of damage suddenly increased by more than 10 times in a few months and why Igor Bozhkov, who was not actually involved in the investigation, suddenly decided to voice new details of the case? As a result, in November 2012, RKS General Director Yuri Urlichich was dismissed. Interestingly, all claims against the alleged illegal transfer of funds from RKS to shell companies were recognized by the Arbitration Court as unfounded, so the fate of this criminal case, in which not a single person has yet been arrested, is very vague.But if there were thefts at the RKS, then the investigation should also bring claims against the main initiator of this “assault” - Mr. Popovkin. Let us recall that Popovkin supervised GLONASS from the Ministry of Defense, and since 2008 he has been a member of the board of directors of RKS. That is, his signature, like Urlichich’s, is on many major contracts concluded by RKS. One can, of course, assume that Popovkin knew nothing about possible thefts, but during the scandal around RKS, another extremely interesting detail surfaced. It turns out that Popovkin’s daughter Natalya, during the years when billions were allegedly embezzled from RKS, received income from the main owner of the now famous NPO KP - the ACC Space TV company, and at the same time from two other companies founded by Yuri Urlichich. Popovkin explained this fact as a coincidence - they say that at that moment his daughter was on academic leave and he asked his friends to get her a job closer to home in the east of Moscow. And it just so happened that these companies were directly related to RKS and the GLONASS program, which Popovkin supervised at the Ministry of Defense. What’s interesting is that, according to the documents, Popovkin’s daughter worked in these companies for several years – such was the length of her academic leave. The question inevitably arises: wasn’t this income of Popovkin’s daughter an unofficial payment for the official not to notice, as if by chance, what was happening in the “Russian Space Systems”?
By the way, this is not the first episode when the business of Popovkin’s close relatives suddenly “accidentally” turns out to be very close to the area of official duties of an official. Popovkin’s wife Natalya Grigorieva in 2005 (at that time Popovkin commanded the Space Forces) also seemed to accidentally become the founder of Kosmosenergocontract LLC, which, according to available data, was engaged in supplying electricity to the cosmodrome under her husband’s jurisdiction. Some of Grigorieva’s business partners later became defendants in a criminal case - they were accused of supplying the military with electricity at inflated prices and bypassing tax laws...
In our opinion, the “attack” on the RKS helped Popovkin solve several problems at once. The main thing, as we believe, is to move Urlichich, who is inconvenient for him, away from the multibillion-dollar pie of budgetary allocations for the GLONASS system and to put in his place a person from his team. In December last year, reports appeared that the former Chief of the General Staff, General Yuri Baluevsky, with whom Popovkin maintained close business and friendly relations while serving in the Ministry of Defense, could head the RKS. But what relation can the former Chief of the General Staff have to the space industry? Or maybe Baluevsky, following the example of Urlichich, will at the same time be appointed general designer of GLONASS? It is possible that the corruption scandal surrounding RKS also played into Popovkin’s hands in terms of shaping public opinion around the GLONASS program. All failures can now be safely attributed to the “saboteurs” from the RKS, who, they say, instead of working on the system, were only engaged in theft of budget funds. But Popovkin seemed to have nothing to do with it and, on the contrary, revealed large-scale thefts.
They will fight for quality with cuts
Another victim of Popovkin in the near future may be the head of the Rocket and Space Corporation (RSC) Energia, Vitaly Lopota. On the eve of the new year, 2013, Lopota publicly opposed Popovkin’s plans to reform the rocket and space industry. In December 2012, Popovkin decided to create a management company and transfer under its management the Khrunichev Center, TsSKB Progress, and the engine-building subholding and NPO Energomash, removing the latter from the control of RSC Energia. According to Lopota, all this will kill competition in the industry, and one cannot but agree with this opinion - in fact, the entire engine industry will be consolidated into a single structure. The fact is that back in 2010, a decision was made to reorganize the rocket and space industry according to a different scheme: TsSKB Progress and NPO Energomash were transferred to the management of RSC Energia. Another large holding was built on the basis of the Khrunichev Center. The result was two competing manufacturers of launch vehicles - “Protons” and “Angars” from the holding on the basis of “Khrunichev” and “Soyuz” from RSC Energia. But this reorganization option was frozen. And if Vitaly Lopota stated that he would fight against plans for such a reorganization, then on the part of the Khrunichev Center there was no one to resist Popovkin - in August last year, the head of the center, Vladimir Nesterov, was dismissed. Officially, he paid with his position for a series of space accidents; it is possible that unofficially Nesterov’s resignation could have been part of Popovkin’s big plan to purge the industry of managers disloyal to him and his reform plans. It is difficult to predict whether Lopota will survive this conflict with Popovkin; it is possible that in the near future, as in the case of RKS, a major corruption scandal may occur at RSC Energia, and Lapota’s place will be taken by some tanker or artilleryman close to Popovkin.Plans for reforming the industry also cause misunderstanding among ordinary employees of the rocket and space industry. Just look at Popovkin’s statement that in the near future the number of personnel at enterprises in the industry may be reduced from the current 240 to 150–170 thousand people. Popovkin proposes to compensate for the loss of workers in the industry by attracting private firms to the lower levels of the industry. In this regard, for some reason, I immediately recall the recent scandal in Samara, where counterfeit production of components and parts for Soyuz rockets was discovered in garage boxes. It seems that if Popovkin’s plans to attract free business to the industry come true, then such garage cooperation will be put on stream. Meanwhile, experts note that, speaking of layoffs, no viable options have been proposed to bring the industry out of the acute personnel crisis. It’s no secret that the Russian cosmonautics today is supported by older specialists - the age of the majority of qualified employees has exceeded 50 years, and there is no replacement for them and is not expected. Young people are reluctant to enter the industry due to low salaries by industry standards.
“The reform imposed on the space industry today by Popovkin has not passed the minimum expert assessment. The European and American experience is not taken into account; Russia, as always, follows its own “special” path, says our interlocutor at Roscosmos. – Experienced managers have already been uncoupled along this path – Urlichich, Nesterov. At the moment, an attack has been launched on RSC Energia and its leader Lopota. The effectiveness of these decisions is questionable, and the prospects are unclear.”
The situation has become so tense that serious opposition to the current head of the Russian space program has already formed in the industry. It is difficult to judge how far this confrontation can go. One thing is clear: it will not lead to anything good.
No new missiles are expected yet
Meanwhile, the rocket and space industry has come close to the point at which any ill-conceived decision can finally finish off the domestic astronautics. One of the main current tasks of the industry is the creation of a new launch vehicle for manned flights; on this issue, Popovkin’s position cannot be called anything other than throwing. Today, all manned flights are carried out on Soyuz rockets, which were developed back in the 50s of the last century and, despite their constant modernization, are already obsolete. The Soyuz in the space arsenal was to be replaced by the Rus-M launch vehicle being developed by RSC Energia, which has many advantages over its predecessor, in particular, manned launches can be carried out from Russian cosmodromes. However, in 2011 the project was frozen - the official reason given was insufficient funding. At that time, almost 2 billion rubles were spent on preparing the project for the complex. At the same time, Roscosmos officials then categorically assured the public that we did not need Rus-M, since the development of the Angara rocket, which had similar characteristics, was being completed. These statements looked strange, since the Angara was developed exclusively as a cargo complex to replace the Progress. There was no talk of using the Angara for manned flights. However, in October 2012, reports appeared that work on Rus-M would still be resumed; the total cost of the project was estimated at 250 billion rubles. While space officials were deciding which rockets we needed and which ones we didn’t, the system developers lost a whole year...Not everything is going smoothly with the cargo Angara - the first test launch of the launch vehicle, despite the fact that all its main components have successfully passed ground tests, has already been postponed eight times. Roscosmos officials hope to definitely launch the rocket in 2013, but we heard similar promises in 2012 and 2011.
As you can see, the management of the space industry today faces tasks that are quite comparable in scale to the creation of Buran. Only the scale of the personalities who stood at the helm of the space industry then and today are completely incomparable. And it’s not even a matter of Mr. Popovkin’s organizational “abilities.” Representatives of the old space guard with whom I spoke believe that Popovkin’s career as head of Roscosmos should have ended after the memorable story of a drunken brawl at an internal departmental corporate party in March 2012. As the media wrote, the head of Roscosmos got into a fight with one of his colleagues out of jealousy towards his press secretary Anna Vedishcheva, who recently worked as a fashion model. Popovkin ended up with a traumatic brain injury in the hospital named after. Burdenko, and the official reason for hospitalization, announced by the department’s press service, was “overwork.” Well, what kind of missiles are we talking about here?!
Vladimir Popovkin was 56 years old. He headed Roscosmos in April 2011, leaving the post of First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation. Popovkin left his post in 2013.
“Vladimir Alexandrovich’s whole life was connected with service in the armed forces and space. The team of the Federal Space Agency expresses its deepest condolences to the family and friends of Vladimir Alexandrovich,” the statement says.
Popovkin was born in 1957 in Dushanbe. In 1979 he graduated from the Red Banner Military Engineering Institute named after Mozhaisky in Leningrad and served at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. In 1989 he graduated from the Dzerzhinsky Military Academy, after which he served in the Office of the Chief of Space Facilities of the USSR, and then in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In July 2001, Major General Popovkin was appointed the first chief of staff of the newly created Space Forces in Russia. Since March 2004, he became commander of the Russian Space Forces. In February 2005, he was awarded the rank of Colonel General.
In June 2008, Popovkin was appointed chief of armaments of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation. In February 2009, he was awarded the rank of army general. In March 2009, Popovkin was discharged from active military service and transferred to federal civil service while retaining the position of Deputy Minister of Defense. In June 2010, he was appointed to the post of First Deputy Minister of Defense.
Less than a year later - in April 2011 - he was relieved of his post and appointed head of Roscosmos after the resignation, whose departure was associated with a large number of accidents in rocket and space technology.
True, after Popovkin’s appointment as head of Roscosmos, there were no fewer accidents. In August 2011, after an unsuccessful launch, the Express-AM4 satellite was lost, and a few days after that, the Soyuz-U launch vehicle with the Progress M-12M cargo ship fell. In November there was a failure with the launch of the Phobos-Grunt interplanetary station. In December, shortly after launch, the Meridian communications spacecraft crashed. In August 2012, due to abnormal operation of the Briz-M upper stage, two communications satellites were lost - the Russian Express-MD2 and the Indonesian Telkom 3. In December 2012, the Briz-M upper stage launched the "Briz-M" satellite into an off-design orbit. Yamal-402". Later, the satellite was launched into the target orbit using its own engine, but its service life in orbit was reduced. Another accident occurred in February 2013, the Zenit-3SL rocket with the Intelsat-27 satellite fell after launch into the Pacific Ocean 2.5 km from the launch platform. Finally, on July 2, the Proton-M launch vehicle with three Glonass-M navigation satellites fell and exploded near the launch site in the first minute of the flight.
In March 2012, he was admitted to the neurosurgical department of the Burdenko Hospital. The official reason for hospitalization was given as “prolonged physical and emotional stress, caused, among other things, by frequent business trips with time zone changes and disruption of the usual rhythm of work.”
Although the yellow press reported that on the eve of the inspection of Roscosmos by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos allegedly drank too much alcohol at a corporate party in honor of March 8 and was hit in the head with a bottle because of his press secretary and former top model. Because of this, the verification did not take place.
In March 2012, an open letter from the Deputy General Director appeared on the Internet, who reproached Popovkin for reducing the salaries of directors of enterprises in the industry, as well as for the fact that in Roscosmos a certain group of people had received unlimited powers, without kickbacks they would not sign a single contract. . In turn, after this information appeared that the campaign to discredit Popovkin was ordered by certain officials of Roscosmos, whose interests were affected during the reform of the department carried out by Popovkin. Popovkin, while still Deputy Minister of Defense, harshly criticized the current situation in the Russian space industry.
After his appointment to Roscosmos, he did not like, in particular, that almost half of Roscosmos employees were over 60 years old. In October 2013, Popovkin was relieved of his post as head of Roscosmos.
Vladimir Popovkin was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree, and the Order of Military Merit, as well as a prize in the field of science and technology.
He successfully went from a smart officer to a grabber and a morally corrupt type, which he recently became. In principle, his activities as Chief of Armaments of the Armed Forces and head of Roscosmos are quite enough to ensure that he is no longer allowed within a cannon shot of serious government positions. The Committee of People's Control in its next author's material analyzes the activities of Popovkin and the factors that contributed to his rise and fall.
Popovkin Vladimir Aleksandrovich, born on September 25, 1957, native of Dushanbe. Graduated from the Military Engineering Red Banner Institute named after. A.F. Mozhaisky (Leningrad) and the Military Academy named after. F. E. Dzerzhinsky. He has the military rank of reserve army general and the academic degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences.
In the period from 1975 to 2009, he served in the Armed Forces of the USSR and the Russian Federation. He served as an engineer, department head and team leader at the launch complex of the Baikonur cosmodrome, in the Office of the Chief of Space Facilities of the USSR Ministry of Defense, in the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, where he worked his way up from a senior operator to a department head. From 2001 to 2004, he served as chief of staff of the Space Forces, and from 2004 to 2008, commander of these forces.
In 2008, he was appointed Chief of Armaments of the Russian Armed Forces with the rank of Deputy Minister of Defense. In 2009, he was transferred from active military service to the reserve and transferred to the rank of federal civil servants, retaining his position. In 2010, he became First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, and in 2011 he was appointed head of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).
On October 10, 2013, V. A. Popovkin was relieved of his post as head of Roscosmos.
Popovkin has the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree, the Order for Military Merit, and the medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, II degree. He is a full member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics named after K. E. Tsiolkovsky and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences, as well as a laureate of the Russian Government Prize in the field of science and technology for 2005. He has the class rank of civil service, active state councilor of the Russian Federation, 2nd class.
Married, has two children.
Closest relatives:
Brother: Popovkin Vasily Alexandrovich, born on January 25, 1960, entrepreneur. Specializes in food imports.
Wife: Natalya Rafilyevna Grigorieva, born on August 15, 1967, entrepreneur. In 2005, she became the founder of Kosmosenergocontract LLC, which was engaged in supplying electricity to the Baikonur cosmodrome under its jurisdiction. Subsequently, Grigorieva’s business partners became defendants in a criminal case regarding the supply of electricity to the military at inflated prices and bypassing tax laws.
Daughter: Popovkina Natalya Vladimirovna, born 06/09/1980, entrepreneur. She was a beneficiary of a number of companies associated with Yuri Urlichich.
Daughter (adopted): Anastasia Sergeevna Grigorieva, born July 2, 1988, graduate student at the Moscow Academy of Finance and Law.
Baluevsky Yuri Nikolaevich, born on January 09, 1947, advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, former Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. He assisted Popovkin’s career in the 1990s and recommended him at one time for the post of chief of staff of the Space Forces.
Vedishcheva Anna Anatolyevna, born on June 18, 1983, former press secretary of the head of Roscosmos. According to some reports, she was in a love affair with Popovkin, thanks to which she received her post. She was involved in a scandal when Popovkin was hospitalized after a drunken fight, the cause of which was Vedishcheva.
Perminov Anatoly Nikolaevich, born June 16, 1945, Deputy General Director of RKS OJSC, former head of Roscosmos. When he was the commander of the Space Forces, Popovkin served as their chief of staff. It was Perminov who recommended Popovkin as his successor to the position of first commander of the Space Forces, and then head of Roscosmos.
Rogozin Dmitry Olegovich, born December 21, 1963, Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation. A tough opponent of Popovkin. He was one of the main initiators of his resignation from the post of head of Roscosmos.
Serdyukov Anatoly Eduardovich, born on January 8, 1962, former Minister of Defense. Popovkin, being the Chief of Armaments of the Armed Forces and the First Deputy Minister of Defense, fiercely supported the unpopular reforms carried out by Serdyukov in the army.
Urlichich Yuri Matevich, born on August 3, 1962, former General Director of OJSC RKS. At first, they closely interacted with Popovkin, including during the development of budget funds allocated for the implementation of the GLONASS program, but then their relationship cooled. Urlichich was dismissed from his post on Popovkin’s initiative.
Food for thought:
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Popovkin was born into a military family. His father, Alexander Konstantinovich, was a deputy technical engineer in a tank company, and then a deputy technical engineer in a tank battalion, so the boy literally grew up among military equipment. All this predetermined the choice of Volodya, who since childhood dreamed of being not only a military man, but also being associated with military equipment. Moreover, when he went to school, he had no problems with the exact sciences, primarily with mathematics and physics.
Volodya Popovkin spent the first nine years of his life in Dushanbe, but then his father was transferred to Central Russia, since Volodya’s mother, Maria Vasilievna, was often ill in the difficult climate of Central Asia. The Popovkin family moved to the city of Kalinin, where Popovkin Jr. graduated from physics and mathematics school. At the same time, he didn’t have a single C in his certificate, but got A’s in all the main subjects. Teachers recommended that he try to enter a serious Moscow university, like Moscow Higher Technical School. Bauman, MAI or MIPT, but by that time Vladimir only wanted to be a military man. And not just a military man, but a military engineer providing space launches. Such specialists were trained in Leningrad, at the Military Engineering Institute named after. A.F. Mozhaisky, where Popovkin directed his steps.
Although Vladimir was not an excellent student, he studied well and, having received the coveted lieutenant's shoulder straps, was assigned to the Baikonur Cosmodrome. He served well, having passed in seven years from a department engineer to the head of the launch complex team, and from lieutenant to major, and in 1986 he was recommended to study at the Military Academy. F. E. Dzerzhinsky. Vladimir Aleksandrovich graduated from the Academy with honors, received the next military rank of lieutenant colonel and was assigned to the Office of the Chief of Space Facilities (UNKS) of the USSR Ministry of Defense, which in the same 1989, when Popovkin joined it, was removed from the subordination of the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces and became an independent unit of the Ministry of Defense .
Two years later, Vladimir Alexandrovich was transferred to the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff. At first, he held the position of senior operator officer, similar to the one he had in UNKS, but then was promoted to become a group chief. This was already a colonel’s position, so Popovkin soon pinned the third star to his shoulder straps. Then he becomes the deputy head of a direction, and in 1999 - the head of a direction at the State Educational Institution, becoming a general at the age of forty-two. Vladimir Aleksandrovich was in good standing with the then head of the State Educational Institution, Colonel General Yuri Baluevsky, so he expected that his career would go very smoothly.
And so it happened. In 2001, on the basis of space launch units and Rocket and Space Defense units allocated from the Strategic Missile Forces, a new branch of the military was created - the Space Forces. Their first commander was Colonel-General Anatoly Perminov, who was the Chief of the Main Staff of the Strategic Missile Forces, but being from the Strategic Missile Forces, Perminov could not be fully competent in matters of managing the space group of the Armed Forces, so he needed an intelligent deputy, who, moreover, would also be a specialist in the field of military space. And then Baluevsky, who by that time was already the first deputy chief of the General Staff, recommended Popovkin to Perminov. Anatoly Nikolaevich liked the young and efficient general and soon Vladimir Alexandrovich became the chief of staff of the Space Forces and, at the same time, their first deputy commander. And when in 2004 Perminov was dismissed from military service upon reaching the age limit and appointed head of the Federal Space Agency, Popovkin was the only candidate for the post of commander of the Space Forces.
In 2007, the “semi-civilian” Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov was replaced by a completely civilian Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, who was also burdened with a pathological hatred of people in uniform. Immediately, the creation of a “new look” of the Armed Forces began, or, to be more precise, their systematic destruction. Those generals who tried to object to the murderous reforms were immediately expelled to civilian life. But Popovkin not only was not noticed among the critics of the new minister, but in any case glorified the wisdom of the line he pursued. This could not go unnoticed, and in 2008, Vladimir Aleksandrovich, who by that time was already a colonel general, became the Chief of Armaments of the Armed Forces - Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, replacing another Serdyukov sycophant, Nikolai Makarov, who became the head of the Armed Forces for his rabid support of destructive army reforms by the Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces.
In his new post, Popovkin had to build a new procurement management system for state defense orders. He did this successfully, and besides, he demonstrated appropriate and inappropriate servility towards the Minister of Defense. Therefore, in 2009, he resignedly resigned from military service, but retained his position, and in 2010 he was promoted to First Deputy Minister of Defense. In addition to the constant praise of Serdyukov and his reforms, in his post, Vladimir Aleksandrovich was remembered for the fact that he actually failed the program of rearmament of the Armed Forces, and also called the T-90 tank “a deep modernization of the T-34,” proposing to “remove the fighting compartment from the cockpit.”
While Popovkin was in charge of weapons, the Russian space close to him continued to be in a fever. The appointment of Anatoly Perminov to Roscosmos did not help the situation. The satellites fell, the Proton-M launch vehicles did not want to take off. Anatoly Nikolayevich, who had reached retirement age, was made the last, and they hastened to see him off to his well-deserved rest, and Popovkin was appointed in his place. Moreover, both his former boss Perminov and his new leader Serdyukov supported the candidacy of Vladimir Alexandrovich. At the same time, no one was embarrassed by the fact that a person who failed the state defense order is unlikely to be able to “raise” the space industry.
And so it happened. Popovkin headed Roscosmos in April 2011, and already in August the Proton-M launch vehicle was unable to launch the Express-AM4 communications satellite into the intended orbit. Just a few days later, the Soyuz-U carrier crashed with the Progress M-12M unmanned cargo ship, which was supposed to dock with the international space station. In response to criticism, Roscosmos stated that this is all the “heavy legacy of the previous leadership”, which has nothing to do with Vladimir Alexandrovich, who is just getting into the swing of things and is gradually “restoring” order in the industry.
However, in November 2011, Roscosmos suffered another major setback. The Phobos-Grunt automatic interplanetary station, which was supposed to deliver soil samples from the Mars satellite to earth for the first time, was unable to leave Earth’s orbit. In truth, this happened because 80% of the funds from his budget were simply stolen. With the remaining 20% of the funding, the designers, whose salaries did not exceed the salaries of salespeople at Euroset, were able to build not a full-fledged device, but in fact a dummy of it, which, with the help of a launch vehicle, was able to reach orbit, but was no longer able to turn on its own engines. However, Popovkin, without further ado, hastened to blame the United States for the disaster, not his own thieving subordinates. In his opinion, the insidious adversary was influencing Phobos-Grunt with its radars while the device was flying over the shadow side of the Earth for Russia.
The cost of the Phobos-Grunt that fell into the Pacific Ocean was about 5 billion rubles, so after this disaster Vladimir Alexandrovich began to ask questions about where billions of rubles of budget funds allocated for space went and why Roscosmos kept almost all of its funds in a relatively small private jar.
This bank, Fondservisbank, became widely known after the unlucky “spy” and ex-subject of Elizabeth II Anna Chapman (Kushchenko) became an adviser to its president and, concurrently, a member of the board of directors. The president of this bank is a certain Alexander Volovnik, who owns 75% of the shares of this bank (6% belongs to him directly, and 69% through LLC Capital Trust Company Union, of which he is the beneficiary). Leadership positions in the bank are occupied by such people as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of InSpace Consulting LLC Mikhail Topalov (father of the famous singer Vlad Topalov) and the former head of Roscosmos Yuri Koptev.
Why exactly Volovnik accumulated most of the government funds allocated to Roscosmos is not really known. Knowledgeable people claim that the Fondservisbank, created in 1994, is controlled by very large officials from the military-industrial complex, who use it as a “laundry” for “washing” budget funds, and its president was recommended for his post by none other than Boris Berezovsky. But time and crises passed, Boris Abramovich had already passed into another world, and the bank and its president Volovnik are still involved in the distribution of financial flows of the space industry.
And these flows, it must be said, are not small, since the state has not been sparing money on space lately. The cost of just three Russian unclassified federal space programs is 100 billion rubles ($3.3 billion). For comparison, in 1989, the USSR allocated $3.28 billion for “civilian” space. Of course, over the past period the dollar has fallen somewhat in price, but in general, the Russian Federation’s spending on civil space is quite comparable to that of the Soviet Union. In addition, Roscosmos and Russian rocket and space industry enterprises annually earn an average of $350 to $450 million for commercial satellite launches. With such funding, the fact that ordinary engineers at Roscosmos enterprises have literally starvation salaries is strange, to say the least. And coupled with the now chronic accidents during launches, this fact raises one question: where does all this money go?
The answer to this question can be obtained by monitoring the implementation of the federal target program for the development of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). In the period from 2009 to 2011, the main developer of the system, OJSC RKS, received almost 31 billion rubles from the state budget for GLONASS. Despite this golden shower, the system was never really developed. In particular, it involved exclusively imported microcircuits purchased in China and Thailand and not suitable for working in space conditions. By the end of 2012, GLONASS was installed on 530 airplanes and helicopters, but experience in its use has shown that it is completely useless, since most aircraft are not equipped with flight navigation systems and the equipment cannot interact with navigation systems. Thus, tracking the aircraft with GLONASS signals is impossible. In addition, GLONASS does not fit into the navigation characteristics of world navigation standards.
The main flow of funds passed through NPO KP CJSC, the beneficiary of which was the general director and general designer of RKS, Yuri Urlichich. Despite the fact that he and Popovkin had successfully interacted since the time when Vladimir Aleksandrovich was the head of the Armed Forces, after Popovkin arrived at Roscosmos, he and Urlichich began constant friction over the distribution of budget flows, which ended with the general director of RKS "was dismissed in November 2012. However, despite numerous threats from Vladimir Alexandrovich against Yuri Matevich, the latter has not yet been subjected to criminal prosecution.
It is quite possible that Popovkin himself was not interested in “finishing off” Urlichich. He only wanted him to leave the profitable business, and not at all for him to begin giving evidence to the investigation, in which the name of Vladimir Alexandrovich could be mentioned repeatedly with the most unpleasant consequences for him. After all, Popovkin supervised GLONASS from the Ministry of Defense, and since 2008 he was a member of the board of directors of RKS. His signature, like Urlichich’s, is on many major contracts concluded by RKS. In addition, “NPO KP” was not a stranger to Vladimir Alexandrovich himself. His daughter Natalya received income from the company - the main owner of NPO KP, the ACC Space TV company, and at the same time in two other companies founded by Urlichich.
In his post, Popovkin became so involved in managing huge financial flows that he began to actively lobby for the transformation of Roscosmos into a state corporation (GC). Having received the status of the Civil Code, his department acquired the functions of a customer, executor, budget recipient and distributor of allocated funds. In addition, Vladimir Aleksandrovich dreamed that stakes in rocket and space industry enterprises held by the state would be transferred to the new corporation, and that all federal state unitary enterprises and Roscosmos would be subordinated. Thus, all the money allocated by the budget for space programs will be channeled through the State Corporation, and at the same time, profits from subsidiaries will be accumulated.
Well, while Vladimir Aleksandrovich was dreaming about how he would manage multi-billion dollar sums, his industry was in a protracted crisis. All manned flights were carried out on Soyuz rockets, which were developed back in the 1950s. The Rus-M launch vehicle, being developed by RSC Energia, was supposed to replace the Soyuz, but the project was frozen in 2011. At the same time, Popovkin stated that the Rus-M is not needed, since the development of the Angara missile, which has similar characteristics, is being completed. At the same time, Vladimir Aleksandrovich modestly kept silent about the fact that Angara was developed exclusively as a cargo complex to replace Progress, and not as a rocket for manned flights.
Plans to reform the industry “according to Popovkin” also caused misunderstanding among ordinary employees of the rocket and space industry. Thus, Vladimir Aleksandrovich announced a reduction in the number of personnel of industry enterprises from the current 240 to 150 thousand people. Popovkin proposed to compensate for the loss of workers by attracting private firms to the lower levels of the industry. The so-called outsourcing, which had completely failed in the army (which is only worthwhile for the notorious Oboronservis, headed by Evgenia Vasilyeva, who is now languishing under house arrest in a thirteen-room apartment), was now being imposed on the space industry. In addition, the process of aging personnel has become irreversible. Elderly professionals retired, or even straight from their desks to the cemetery. Young people were in no hurry to join the Roskomos system. It is unlikely that the current salary of a young specialist will interest anyone!
But Popovkin didn’t care much about this. He led a "beautiful lifestyle" in his understanding; that is, constant feasts, saunas, girls. It was rare that any of his subordinates now saw their boss sober. He made his mistress Anna Vedishcheva the press secretary of the head of Roscosmos, that is, himself. Vladimir Aleksandrovich was not embarrassed by the fact that Vedishcheva, who graduated from the philological department of the Astrakhan Pedagogical Institute, never worked either in the space industry or in the field of PR. Her entire work experience consisted of working as a scientific editor at the Fisheries Research Institute during the day and as an escort model at the Carmen Models agency at night. Because of this demi-monde lady, Popovkin even suffered, hit on the head with a bottle from his own subordinate during an “event” to celebrate International Women’s Day in one of the Moscow restaurants.
But everything ends someday. Popovkin’s tenure as head of Roscosmos also ended. Vladimir Aleksandrovich was at loggerheads with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who also oversees the space industry, and since Dmitry Olegovich’s hardware weight is somewhat greater, the outcome of the confrontation was a foregone conclusion. To begin with, Rogozin “cut down” all of Popovkin’s attempts to create a state corporation, and then squeezed Popovkin himself out of office. True, Dmitry Olegovich failed to put his own man at the head of Roscosmos, but that’s a completely different story.
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Popovkin successfully went from a smart officer to a grabber and morally corrupt type, which he has recently been. In principle, his activities as Chief of Armaments of the Armed Forces and head of Roscosmos are quite enough to ensure that he is no longer allowed within a cannon shot of serious government positions. However, as practice shows, in our country people like Popovkin, unfortunately, are “unsinkable” and sooner or later they “pop up” to occupy another post close to financial flows.
