Located near the Chinese border, the Vostochnyi cosmodrome was meant to become one of the largest construction projects of the Putin administration, outstripping even the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit complex in Vladivostok in 2012. Following President Putin's turn to the Far East in the early 2000s, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed the Vostochnyi project into action in 2007. Its aim? To acquire greater independence in space exploration. Currently, Russia relies on Kazakhstan for the use of Baikonur, built back in the 1950s.
While Vostochnyi is meant to kickstart Russia’s space industry, this project is also intended to develop the Far East more broadly — the ‘centre’ traditionally pays little attention to this part of the world. But though December 2015 is supposed to see the launch of this flagship project, unfortunately, since its inception, this cosmodrome has been racked by scandals over corruption and unpaid wages.
‘We’ll get the keys to our own space programme back from Kazakhstan’
Indeed, Baikonur – deep in the Central Asian steppe – is subject to Russian Federation law and its tax system, and more than half of its residents are ethnic Russians (often military personnel and their families).
