Putin Government Moves To Take Control of Russia's largest space company Energia 252
schwit1 writes Vitaly Lopota, the president of Russia's largest space company Energia, was suspended Friday by the company's board of directors. From the article: "The move appears to be part of an effort by Russia's government to obtain majority control over Energia, of which it owns a 38-percent share. The directors elected Igor Komarov as its new chairman of the board. Komarov is chief of the Russian United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), the government-owned company tasked with consolidating Russia's sprawling space sector." The government is also conducting a criminal investigation of Lopota, which might be justified but appears to be a power play designed to both eliminate him from the game as well as make sure everyone else tows the line so that URSC can take complete control.
Jump start the US space industry again? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe we'll finally stop relying on Russia for access to space...
Re:"to take control" (Score:5, Interesting)
Consolidating a fragmented industry can be a good idea and has worked to a greater or lesser extent in the past. The problem is that the government is usually too far behind the curve to make the best decisions and a good example would be some of the nationalisations that happened in the UK.
However, in Russia, it is about redistributing the assets privatised in the early nineties. The privatisations were a "fire-sale" in which only a favoured few could take part, however subsequently, the shares traded on a secondary market and became assets belonging to pension funds and the like. Unfortunately, in the early nineties, when Putin and his backers (the so-called Siloviki) came to power, they discovered there was nothing new to privatise so they took some companies back such as Yukos. On the smaller scale, many companies found themselves forced with new directors who had relationships with the Siloviki.
Either way, by undermining corporate governance and the protection of property, the government has made it far more difficult for a normal financial infrastructure to exist.
Re:Response to sanctions (Score:4, Interesting)
It is basically Putin's way of saying: "Look, I am in control of how to get to space."
He's not. I'm pretty sure Chinese, Indians, Americans and Europeans are going to continue to go to space with or without Putin.
US simply does not understand the Russians. Sanctions cannot possibly work against them.
US is not working against 'Russians'. It's just containing a power-hungry dictatorial imperialistic regime. Attacking the wealth of a regime is always a good way to reduce its ability to conquer neighboring nations.
They always one up whatever move you do
Do you seriously think they didn't consider all the options Putin has? Or maybe at least the obvious ones like cutting his exports and imports? It's just a typical reactionary BS
This time it is gonna be played to the utter economic destruction of one of the two nuclear super powers or an all out nuclear war.
Yeah, imagine US losing their 28th business partner by volume of trade [trade.gov]. Economic destruction my @ss.
It looked like such a smart move by the US state department to take over the Ukrainian government, too bad they didn't understand that the move would inevitably start a war. Now we will all pay the price.
Typical dictatorship thinking - if I lose control over a government it must be because some other country took it. There's no way people would just elect their own representatives...
Re:minutes to midnight (Score:5, Interesting)
You might think it is funny, but this really is sort of the plan of Putin.
It has always been his plan, from the start.
He never made a secret of it and clearly states that this is what he is trying to do.
It might not be communism he wants. What he wants a is strong Russia, a country other countries respect (maybe this can be explained as: fear).
Which includes re-integrating most of the former USSR countries.