MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Roscosmos has been targeted by an information attack launched by forces in Russia and abroad to create an image of a state corporation “devouring” federal funds and to prevent the country from regaining its leadership in space exploration, Roscosmos spokesman Vladimir Ustimenko said in an interview with Sputnik.
‘The [Russian space] industry has just started restructuring to create industry-specific industrial holdings — rocket, engine-building, instrument-making. Roscosmos was set in motion. Perhaps the information attack on us is linked with this. Someone outside and inside the country really does not want Russia to regain leadership in space’, Ustimenko said.
He asked the public and the media to respect the rocket and space industry, creating a nuclear shield of the motherland and the most modern digital technologies.
‘They are systematically trying to paint the image of Roscosmos as the biggest debtor, and the industry that “devours federal money”. The goal is to deprive us of [state] support in the calculation of the industry’s budget, which today is almost 20 times less than that of the NASA budget’, he added.
Chairman of Russia’s Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin and the Prosecutor General’s Office recently announced that serious financial irregularities had been found at Roscosmos.
Meanwhile, the net profit of Russian space corporation Roscosmos in 2017 amounted to 4.191 billion rubles ($62.7 million), which is 1.5 times higher than the same indicator in 2016, according to the annual report of the state corporation.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
