By Olha Hembik | 2026-01-20

WARSAW -- Russia's struggle to keep pace in space has become harder to disguise. Aging technology, the war in Ukraine and the cumulative effect of Western sanctions are colliding, exposing deep vulnerabilities in a program once central to Moscow's global prestige.

On November 27, a Soyuz rocket launch damaged Launch Site 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, according to the BBC. The Soyuz MS-28 mission carried two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS). Video broadcast by Roscosmos showed debris from a three-story service platform used by engineers to prepare rockets for launch.

Roscosmos downplayed the incident. In a Telegram post, the agency said damage had been identified to "several launch pad components" and that repairs would be completed soon because spare parts were available. A recording of the broadcast was later removed from Roscosmos' official channel.

Independent experts were less sanguine. They said the damage could halt launches from the complex and disrupt ISS operations. As a result, Russia is temporarily unable to send crews into space for the first time since 1961, according to Meduza. Russian social media quickly filled with memes reading "Yuri, forgive us," a reference to Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.

Relics of a bygone era

More than 400 R-7 and Soyuz rockets have launched from Site 31 since it began operating in 1961. Since 2020, the pad has been critical for supplying the Russian segment of the ISS.

The complex uses a distinctive design: Rockets are suspended on supports while exhaust flames are directed into a trench beneath the pad. A three-story service platform provides access to engines from below. Forty-four minutes before launch, the platform should retract into a niche and be shielded by a steel wall.

Grigory Kichkin, a military chaplain and coordinator of the Nehemiah Initiative in Ukraine who studies space technology history, said the accident likely occurred because the platform was not fully retracted.

"It's unclear why the command to fire the engines was given if the service platform was not yet in the required pre-launch position," Kichkin told Kontur.

He said the simultaneous ignition of the first- and second-stage engines "burned up all of the rocket's contents" and hurled the platform into the flame trench.

According to Naked Science, the destroyed service platform is no longer mass-produced. The outlet, citing US aerospace experience, described it as a space product "from a bygone era" that cannot be quickly rebuilt because the required alloys are no longer manufactured and component dimensions, down to bolts, are obsolete.

Andriy Kharuk, a military technology researcher and professor at the Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Army Academy, said degraded technology is at the heart of Russia's space failures.

"The launch complex's service structure was manufactured at the Novokramatorsk Machine-Building Plant. It's a Ukrainian plant," Kharuk told Kontur. He said recreating a similar structure could take years.

During the Soviet era, Ukraine played a central role in space electronics development, with Kharkiv as a major hub. Ukrainian enterprises designed missile control systems, telemetry units, diagnostic modules and electrical circuits for rockets including Soyuz, Zenit and Cyclone.

"If the Russians end up being able to reproduce all of this, it will be after some long period of time," Kharuk said.

Sanctions bite hard

Nurlan Aselkan, editor-in-chief and publisher of Space Research and Technology, said the Baikonur accident could halt Russia's manned space program "for a long time."

Russia has lost not only the ability to send crews to the ISS but also to launch Progress cargo ships that deliver fuel and supplies.

Other Soyuz-capable launch sites offer little relief. Vostochny Cosmodrome lacks infrastructure for manned Soyuz and Progress missions. Plesetsk's northern location makes ISS launches unsafe because flight paths would pass over densely populated areas, the BBC reported. The Soyuz complex in French Guiana remains closed due to the termination of cooperation between Russia and Europe in 2022 following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

A potential alternative -- Launch Site 1, known as Gagarin's Start -- also stalled. In 2019, Russia, Kazakhstan and the UAE planned to overhaul the historic pad. In late 2021, then-Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said the UAE was ready to fund the project. By April 2022, he acknowledged there was no money.

"I think that for now, the Gagarin Start will stand as a reminder of the great Soviet cosmonautics and a reproach to those who made space the object of their political whims," Rogozin said, as quoted by Meduza.

In 2025, the site was officially transferred to Kazakhstan to become a museum.

Unable to resume

Aselkan said the Baikonur accident "exposed the systemic crisis that Baikonur has been in for many years."

With mounting geopolitical tensions and dwindling technical capacity, Russia sharply curtailed activity at the cosmodrome, he said, pointing to the long-delayed Angara-5 rocket program, first slated to fly in 2008 and still in testing.

Oleksandr Antonyuk, a Ukrainian political consultant and serviceman, said Russia's economy is now far weaker than that of the late Soviet Union.

"Due to the war with Ukraine and the subsequent introduction of a series of sanctions, it is clear that the Russian Federation is not technologically capable of independently resuming its space program," Antonyuk told Kontur.

He said Moscow would likely lean on China to support space projects tied to security and military needs, potentially under the guise of joint missions.

"Whoever controls space and the satellite -- has parity in the event of military threats," Antonyuk said, adding that China would use such cooperation to advance its own global ambitions.

The next crewed ISS launch was planned for about six months out. Space blogger Vitaly Egorov wrote that it could be delayed up to a year -- and that US partners could supply essentials if needed.