Roskosmos: Heads roll, launch project scrapped
November 4, 2025
Reports from the Russian Space Web (RSW) say that heads continue to roll at Russia’s Roskosmos.
The site says that the Director General at ISS Reshetnev, prime developer of military and communications satellites, is “voluntarily resigning”. On October 10th, Roskosmos announced that Evgeny Nesterov, the head of ISS Reshetnev, Russia’s prime developer of military and communications satellites, had voluntarily resigned from his post and his former deputy Mikhail Valov was appointed the new Director General at the company.
In October, Maksim Kharlamov, the head of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, left his position and his deputy Oleg Kononenko was appointed interim director.
In February, the head of Roskosmos Yuri Borisov was dismissed from his position after just 2 and a half years at the post, and the 39-year-old former Deputy Minister of Transport Dmitry Bakanov was appointed as the new Director General of the Roskosmos State Corporation.
RSW added: “By September 2025, Nikolai Nesterchuk, the head of Roskosmos’ TsENKI ground infrastructure division, was also reported to be ousted. His first deputy Oleg Maidanovich was appointed a new Director General at TsENKI. Around the same time, Mikhail Izyumov, Director General at NPO Avtomatiki in Yekaterinburg was rumored to be fired and banned from work at Roskosmos for failing to pass the test of ‘spetsoperatsiya’ [the Kremlin’s euphemism for the invasion of Ukraine]”.
It is unclear what exactly that meant but on September 17th, Roskosmos announced the appointment of Anatoly Melnikov, a former head of internal audit at RKTs Progress, to the position of Director General at NPO Avtomatiki. “The former director of NPO Avtomatiki Mikhail Izyumov made a decision to transfer to a different place of work,” RSW noted.
The news also emerged that Space Transportation Division of the S7 airline, (once advertised as ‘Russian SpaceX’) has been abandoned. The company initially focused on the revival of the failed Sea Launch floating rocket-to-satellite launch project. The S7 project – also known as Kosmicheskie Transportnye Sistemy – was liquidated on September 30th.
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