Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities | Hacker News Reader

Russian Assets Reportedly Seized at Baikonur Cosmodrome by Kazakh Authorities

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212 pointstaubek142 comments

This apparently is a building/warehouse valued under $30 million that was under construction and never completed, never paid for. It is inside the boundary line of the cosmodrome which makes it notable, but this does not impact space operations for Russia directly.

However it's not like they just seized a Soyuz rocket or crates of rocket engines, or even a train load of rocket fuel and they're holding it in lieu of payment now.

Kazakhstan in recent days has been on record saying that they intend to take small steps towards further independence from Russia.

Very nice. I guess Russia's lease on Baikonur is until 2050. I wonder what happens if it's not renewed...

Russia has now built a launch site inside Russia (Vostochny Cosmodrome), in its far east. Although they don't seem to be actually using it that much at the moment, they wouldn't be cut off from space.

I think the trajectories from there are nowhere as good as Baikonur

Baikonur is 45.62° N, 63.31° E

Vostochny Cosmodrome, (Tsiolkovsky, Amur Oblast) is 51.85° N, 128.35° E. 550 miles west of Sakhalin Island and the Sea of Japan.

51° N is like London...not the best latitude for launching to space

It's definitely not optimal, but GP probably wanted to highlight that it's not much worse than Baikonur (45°), at least when you compare it to Cape Canaveral (28°) or Kourou (5°). Actually, Roskosmos was cooperating with ESA to launch some of their rockets from Kourou, but of course since the Ukraine attack that is suspended (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-suspends-coopera...)

Yeah, most of the continental US is better than 45°.

Got to love those dog-leg manouevres and a dashing of extra fuel :)

I don't know anything about space launches, how come the first orbital launch site in mainland Europe is in Esrange in northern Sweden, latitude 67° N? Are different latitudes good for different trajectories?

Yes, Esrange is best suited to launches into Sun Synchronous Orbit, which is high-inclination (nearly a polar orbit). It's very popular for things like Earth observation satellites.

To clarify, SSO is very popular.

You’re right. 45.6deg vs 51.8deg N.

The eastward boost you get from the earths rotation is just: 2 * pi * cos(latitude)/day so the difference is: 2 * pi * r_Earth*(cos(45.2deg)-cos(51.8deg))/day = 40m/s.

Which doesn’t sound like a lot but can add up.

I compared Plesetsk (Russia) vs Baikonur (Kazakhstan) in the Silverbird Astronautics calculator for Soyuz v2-1B using 3.3m fairing and without Fregat, and I got 1552kg estimated payload to escape for Plesetsk and 1665kg for Baikonur. 7% performance hit to high energy trajectories.

http://www.silverbirdastronautics.com/LVperform.html

Plesetsk is more established than V, but is 63deg latitude.

I never considered this and your response made me ask google the question: "Where is the best place to launch a vehicle?"

"The land at the equator is moving 1670 km per hour, and land halfway to the pole is only moving 1180 km per hour, so launching from the equator makes the spacecraft move almost 500 km/hour faster once it is launched."

Neat, thanks for such an interesting answer.

wondering if there is an inhabited planet somewhere out there much more optimized for launching spacecraft

with its equatorial denizens barely hanging on to its surface

Size and mass are the other big factors.

Kourou, at 5° North, is very nicely positioned.

Yeah it's no accident SpaceX built their test launch facility on the beach in Texas, less than 10 miles from the southernmost point in Texas. Brownsville is about 20 miles away and is a natural, true deepwater port which is also helpful, but primary reason was to get as close to the equator as possible while still being on the US mainland. You can throw about 9% more mass into orbit on the equator than from NYC. Florida coastal property is mostly built out and southern Texas is mostly vacant + has a very favorable business climate and lax (state-level) environmental regulations which doesn't hurt either.

I do not believe russians will want or need to get into space until 2050, because the economy of this country is screwed and electronics tech-stack is dependent on global market to deliver required chips... Needless to say the window of opportunity to receive the electronic components is closing. They can't run a space program on gray market deliveries.

They can run one where china supplies the required components.

I doubt China will pay Russia for the space program as the US did.

Last i heard, china is also being limited in acquiring advanced electronics :

  On October 7, the Biden administration unveiled a sweeping set of export controls that ban Chinese companies from buying advanced chips and chip-making equipment without a license. The rule also restricts the ability of “US persons” — including American citizens or green card holders — to provide support for the “development or production” of chips at certain manufacturing facilities in China.

Doesn’t China create advanced electronics?

Mostly assembly with some fabrication. Most semiconductor manufacturing is in Korea and Taiwan, with assembly in China, India, Malaysia, etc. The majority of the design work happens outside of China as well.

> Doesn’t China create advanced electronics?

It creates advanced electronics in the sense that it assembles them. It does not manufacture advanced or even mid-grade chips though which is the crucial point. That’s all Taiwan, Korea, Japan, USA.

I’m not sure that 7nm is not good enough to be called “mid-grade”, but SMIC definitely has the capability of manufacturing chips good enough to get to space.

Advanced stuff isn't necessary for space, most rockets/aerospace worked fine with 1960s tech. Obviously nicer chips can be useful, but it's not like TSMC/Samsung are necessary conditions for getting to the moon or making an ICBM.

Rad hardened chips use really large node sizes

SMIC makes 7nm chips, which is considered high-end. It's not the highest of the high end, but it's not far from that, and it's definitely considered high-end.

> Last i heard, china is also being limited in acquiring advanced electronics :

In the short term, I'm sure China will be able to get whatever chips it needs (for military applications, at least) that are available on the civilian market, they'll just have to setup front companies, etc.

In the medium to long term, this will motivate China to build the capacity it needs. It might ever exactly be cutting edge, but I'm sure they'll get close enough that it won't matter too much.

> In the medium to long term, this will motivate China to build the capacity it needs. It might ever exactly be cutting edge, but I'm sure they'll get close enough that it won't matter too much.

which says to me, that the export bans is a failure in policy then.

The cost of the export ban is a drop in business value for all the companies being banned (and without compensation by the US gov't afaict). The ban isn't really going to prevent china from getting close-to-cutting-edge chips for military applications either. So the ban, and the associated costs, is for what exactly?!

> which says to me, that the export bans is a failure in policy then.

That's going too far. It's almost like saying "don't fight a battle that won't immediately win you the war." It's important not to overstate their effectiveness (an export ban won't hit some Achilles heel that grind their military to a halt), but that doesn't mean the short term effects aren't valuable and the right thing to do. These bans are delaying tactics, they'll make things harder but not impossible for Russia and China to do certain things, and they might have to make unwanted compromises (e.g. force short-term supply chain issues and redesigning using a less robust common civilian grade chip they can get on the grey market rather than the harder-to-get specialized chip they want).

Basically, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

> don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

this assumes that the "good" is enough, given just a bit more time.

My concern is that a delaying tactic is insufficient. The bans will force the domestic production, for real this time, in these technologies.

After all, necessity is the mother of all inventions. If china was able to buy, at "slightly" elevated prices, western produced chips, the gov't would not really be able to convince businesses to take the hit and pay high capital cost to produce a worse version just as a stepping stone. The investment capital is likely to be wasteful, or misspent - since the "fallback" of western products are available (until they go to war like russia, and the cut off is abrupt and sudden).

A pro-longed ban, like what we see today, without the actual war to trigger it, is likely to give the domestic production the reason it needs to actually get their act together. There's no western "fallback" to make them complacent.

So either they fail miserably, or succeed and wipe the west's technological advantage.

The "good idea", might not be so good if that were to actually happen.

> After all, necessity is the mother of all inventions. If china was able to buy, at "slightly" elevated prices, western produced chips, the gov't would not really be able to convince businesses to take the hit and pay high capital cost to produce a worse version just as a stepping stone. The investment capital is likely to be wasteful, or misspent - since the "fallback" of western products are available (until they go to war like russia, and the cut off is abrupt and sudden).

What do you mean? This is China we're talking about. Every major company has a cell of Communist party members. If the government makes a decision, you follow and don't complain too loudly or risk political consequences. And, IIRC, the Chinese government already made the decision to build up their chip industry years ago (Made in China 2025).

IMHO, it's quite plausible that not implementing an export ban would have just allowed them to make the transition to domestic production more cheaply and more smoothly.

Many years ago they ran a successful space program with no chips at all.

No they didn't. The Soviet Union did.

This is an important distinction. The majority of the aerospace know-how in the Soviet Union came from Ukraine, not from Russia.

What you’re missing is that factories were built in Ukraine as a part of reconstruction after WW2, but engineers were mostly Russian, relocated from Russia.

These days pretty much all Ukrainian space industry is dead, and it was dead even before war. Most competent people left for Russia or USA. Yes, they still provided some components just because it was cheaper to build them in the original factory, but in a last few years Russia just replaced all Ukraine components. Antares had Ukrainian fuel tanks I believe, but I doubt it’ll last long.

Regarding engineers, I don't think that's true at all — as a simple example, two of the three lead engineers on the Soviet space program were from Ukraine.

And the USSR actually traded with the West. Made tons of money selling oil, gas and grain. Putin's actions are devoid of economic logic.

The political logic works even if Russia’s economy tanks he can point to people outside the country as scapegoats. If Russia had normal trade relations with other countries and everything was in shambles then the only blame would be internal.

The crazy thing is their population was crashing so fast adding territory for the people is more important than adding territory for the natural resources.

> The crazy thing is their population was crashing so fast

Basically the case of every eastern european country since fall of communism

Besides it not being them, the Soviet Union stayed almost always close to the state of the art in chips manufacturing.

I don't think you understand russian mentality. If it will be the only option, they will run their space program, however gutted and affected, from grey market. The war will only strengthen this mentality and approach.

Just don't expect thats the same grey market that we individuals are exposed to, currently places like Turkey, Georgia, Belarus and plenty of *stan countries are happily providing all the banned wares. Its not like they need to buy enriched plutonium (of which they have plenty), rather just chips and few things around.

Or they go completely China way, they can pay in raw materials like platinum, oil, gold, diamonds etc.

To run space programs they'll need money. Even with resources they have running both war and space programs will lead to catastrophic consequences. But I suspect that's exactly the way they'll choose.

For the time being, the West has been supplying Putin's troops with plenty of money (taxes from selling natural resources go into the federal budget, which is used to fund the military, and therefore the war). They made record profits last year.

https://svtv.org/gas-for-putin-war/

IDK about gas, but the price cap on Russian oil is lower than what Russians need to break even. They are now losing money on each exported barrel, but IIRC they can't just stop the production; the wells would become unusable.

Of course, the price cap is only in force since December 2022, so the effects haven't fully shown themselves yet.

Where do you get that information about profitability? According to BBC [0] back in 2019 expenses per barrel was $25 before taxes. Obviously sanctions make everything more expensive (hardware, extraction, transport, insurance), but not that expensive.

If selling oil was unprofitable Putun would just burn it instead of selling it at loss just like they burned natural gas for $10,000,000 / day for months.

[0] https://www-bbc-com.translate.goog/russian/news-50392407?_x_...

Many aerospace engineers have left Russia in the last year, too.

Yes, but it's unlikely they will continue their work outside of Russia and many people can very well be bought back. Western countries don't really help talent with Russian passports to leave the country and since space industry is very close to military it's only make it harder to get EU / US visas.

Source: I have a friend who worked at Sea Launch more than decade ago and now he wasn't able to get green card he won because of security clearance.

Access to space for the military is right up there with having a tank factory, rifle factory and bullet factory. You cannot be a superpower, let alone have a functional independent military without access to space.

The land there is leased, but Russia have to pay annual fees for property of Kazakhstan on the territory separately.

Cases of Kazakhstan seizing something there because of late utilities payment happened before.

Thats what happens, when all you got to hold the band together is terror instead of soft power. Everyone just quits at the first sign of weakness.

I was thinking about the same thing a few days ago. One of the most interesting takeaways from this war is how soft power is very underrated, and lack of any soft power whatsoever is one of the reasons behind Russia's problems.

Russia has spend billions to gain soft power by hosting the 2018 world cup, the winter Olympics etc.

However the only "soft power" that has actually worked for Russia are their hundreds of thousands of social media disinfo sockpuppet accounts. They have convinced half of India, Nigeria, Hungary and Kentucky that Ukraine created COVID-19.

Do their energy exports count as soft power? Arguably that was working quite well, until they further expanded in to Ukraine.

I would count that as a different kind of power, distinction from soft and hard. Maybe "commercial power"? "Trading power"?

To me soft power sounds more like culture - being appealing to other country's populations.

I think they count as soft power, but on the energy front, everyone (even Europe itself) completely overestimated how strong it was. Russia very much expected that energy dependency would keep Europe out of the conflict, even if it would put them on a path towards breaking that dependency in the long term. No one seemed to truly expect that the reaction would be so strong that it'd take less than a year to mostly eliminate that dependency.

In fact that went very poorly. They cut off gas to Europe in an attempt to freeze them and make them come to the bargaining table, but Europe responded very strongly and largely still supports Ukraine. The winter was even very mild. In cutting off the crutch, Russia forced Europe to go cold turkey instead of delaying it for a decade like they wanted to. Now Russia has to settle for selling the gas to other places at a steep discount, and Europe may never buy Russian gas again.

There's even a fun parallel to draw with the floating LNG terminals off the coast and WWII floating harbors for Normandy

True, but presumably because of the fear of losing energy supply, Europe chose _not_ to react to earlier provocations, including the invasion of the Crimea.

Yes, the whole salami slice expansion method seems to be designed, to use other diplomats as an abblative layer for empire expansion. Basically using your oponents wish for peace to slowly expand creeping.

And there is a whole diplomat generation standing by to be useful idiots again if not an example is placed like a statue every 3 generations.

You are not alone in this observation https://twitter.com/MarkGaleotti/status/1633012168038785024

I think it is a misunderstanding to think Russia holds no soft power in Kazakhstan.

True, but it seems that the Kazakh leadership is fed up with that power.

Kazakhstan is as authoritarian as Russia was before 2022. They'll pretend there is some conflict with Putin while still supplying sanctioned goods to Russia and serving as banking gateway to bypass financial sanctions.

Yes, hopefully some of the federated republics will start civil wars to break away from the Russian empire. Continue the disintegration process that started in 1991.

Hoping that a nuclear power breaks apart is a nightmare. This is true for states like Pakistan but when you have a stockpile in the thousands and a nuclear logistical distribution like Russia it is nearly guarantee that we have several (terroristic) nuclear explosions over the next decades and probably half a dozen rogue states more.

And do not assume that this is a peaceful transition. Putin is very much concerned about the integrity of Russia.

Concern does not equal the ability to prevent or master a situation. Putin was also concerned with aquiring ukraine. Between that dictator impersonating aparatschik, the ground is liquifying as we speak.

Seems very unlikely to me. Between things like permissive action links, maintenance require to keep the bombs in working order, and expertise in how to use them, I would be dubious of rogue states getting them, wanting to use them, and actually being able to execute on them. Terrorists tend to have some sort of goal. Not just scary bad guys who want to blow stuff up. We typically see nukes are just used to establish legitimacy of authoritarian rulers via idle threats. using nukes is a losing move.

This already happened once when the USSR broke up. The world got through that.

I think in the end you can't dismiss how much it is in every state's self-interest to not start a nuclear exchange.

What is not yet visible, but might be a bringer of future conflict, is the many turk nations that could form a federation of there own. Turkey, Aserbaidschan , Turkmenistan and the Uighurs even, could form quite a mini-union themselves. If they manage for once to be at piece with all the other ethnicities they traditionally supressed similar to the russians.

You can draw a straight line from the USSR breaking up, to Ukraine giving away their nuclear weapons via the Budapest Memorandum, to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (which was a signatory). States are going to be less likely to give up their nuclear weapons, even with treaties, because treaties can be easily broken.

Putin is only concerned about integrity of his own political power and physical body. There is bunch of regions and cities in government databases that was never ever under any kind of military control. Russia is literally have imaginary state border.

Russia doesn’t seem very interested in soft power either. Under Putin they seem more interested in violence, helping some local insurgents, installing strong men.

Even in Ukraine previously sympathetic Ukrainian officials in Ukraine reported getting cold calls from Russians telling them they better fall in line and threatened them. You would think it would be easier to throw them a bone / bribe… but nope.

They don’t seem to understand much outside the bullying sphere.

It is not a coincidence that 2 out of 4 of Russia's "separatist commanders" in eastern Ukraine were killed because of "infighting" between 2014 and 2022.

Original source: https://kz24.news/news/ekonomika/arest-rossiyskogo-imuschest...

Source on the Russian side: https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2023/03/13/kazahstan-arestoval-im...

Auto translation of the original source:

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The Bailiffs' Service of the Republic of Kazakhstan informs that the property of TsENKI (Center for the Operation of Ground-based Space Infrastructure), located in Kazakhstan, has been seized. The company, which is a subsidiary of the state-owned Roscosmos, is prohibited from withdrawing material assets and assets from Kazakhstan. The travel ban has also been extended to the head of the unit - he cannot leave Kazakhstan until the end of investigative actions.

The ban on the use of resources and financial transactions, as well as the instability of negotiating positions in general, slows down the priority area of work at Baikonur — the construction of a new launch pad for the Soyuz-5 rocket. Such a kind of "weightlessness" can turn into a financial "black hole" — 62 billion rubles were spent on the rocket, which may not fly anywhere due to the lack of a launch pad. The joint project "Baiterek" can also, apparently, put an end to, as well as to the whole idea of replacing the Ukrainian "Zenit" with its own development.

The main reason for such actions, many call "incorrect behavior" and harsh statements of the new head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov. Back in 2022, when it came to postponing the construction period for six months, he criticized a lot of delays in launching the launch pad, in particular, the Minister of Communications of the Republic of Kazakhstan Bagdat Musin, who is engaged in space in Kazakhstan.

Bagdat Musin, for his part, calls Yuri Borisov's criticism a "diplomatic miscalculation." Our sources explained that Mr. Musin uses the situation for his own PR. It is obvious that he has quite good skills of "undercover diplomacy". This is evidenced by his rapid growth on the career ladder, as well as a tendency to excessive theatrical attacks. Our people love politicians who show Russia their independence, and Musin is happy to play the independence card for the public once again.

Despite the fact that cooperation in the field of space is beneficial for both countries, it is not clear why Bagdat Batyrbekovich is trying to drive a wedge between Tokayev and Putin. Moreover, he uses various methods to denigrate Yuri Borisov. Sources of kz4. news express concerns that the actions of our minister may really lead to disagreements, which will primarily affect our economy and the development of the research base.

The actions of officials can turn into a serious blow to the entire bilateral space and research program. There is still no substitute for Baikonur, which has a unique geographical location. Maybe officials should calm down their personal ambitions in such a turbulent time, or go to the aggravation of the conflict. Please write in the comments what you think about this issue.

I don't find it appropriate to reproduce the material here, when it is readily available and everybody using this site know how to use a transalte service to translate a website.

The original article was also readily available, should it not have been shared here?

Not verbatim which might in fact be illegal.

Well it is still work and time and parent saved us from it.

So it is convenient for us, but whether it is legal, is probably a grey area.

I've been wanting to visit Baikonur for years, that and the nuclear testing facility at Semipalatinsk. I suspect the Baikonur portion of the trip will have to wait. [1, 2]

The land at Baikonur itself is leased to the Russians who have to okay tourist visits and at this point I suspect that's not easy especially given at least the title of the article above (which for me is not loading).

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/oct/22/across-kazakh...

[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/28/nuclear-bombs-weapons-s...

This actually sounds more like a "Mechanics' Lien" type of situation, as opposed to some kind of political intrigue.

https://archive.ph/gYvSv

Is this real or not? Many articles all pointing to this domain which is currently down.

Sources are sketchy.

Those sources I've found report that Kazakhstani bailiffs put an arrest to Russian property (basically they can't move it out of the country) and forbade some manager to leave country as well. I'm not sure if English meaning of word seizure includes those actions, I thought that seizure is more like expropriation and that's not what happening here.

I think that's not serious. It's either some politics or just bureaucracy. While Kazakhstan is not fully supporting Russia, turning away from it seems like an economic suicide.

But also some "politics" would be interesting. Did Kazakhstan do something similar previously? Is this a new development?

Since Tokayev became a president, IMO relations between Russia and Kazakhstan are getting worse. Of course especially after invasion. But Kazakhstan and Russia are far from enemies, at least for the time being. They have deep economic ties. As I see it, Kazakhstan tries to build more independent economy but it's not really easy to do so, when the only real alternative is China which is completely foreign and many Kazakhs are afraid of Chinese invasion (not military, but economical, buying land and so on). And of course it's kind of hard to defend huge country with the population of 18 million. So military alliance with strong neighbour is kind of necessary in this situation and Russia provides one.

> turning away from it seems like an economic suicide

On the other hand, not turning away from it might be literal suicide.

Nah, we in NATO don’t blame landlocked countries with small economies for having, well, ambiguous relations with nearby Russia. It’s the places that have a choice, like Serbia, India, and Hungary, that are at risk of moving themselves onto our list of geopolitical rivals.

Just checked the GDPs of Serbia v Kazakhstan v Hungary.

Serbia: 63.08 billion USD (2021)

Kazakhstan: 197.1 billion USD (2021)

Hungary: 181.8 billion USD (2021)

Per google, sources include World Bank.

Hungary is doing alot of things right, not politically, but economically its becoming one of the industrial powerhouses of the EU.

Oh, come on. The only reason you have not destroyed our economy with sanctions yet is because your oil companies have deep investments in our oil industry in western parts of the country. Additionally we cover about 50% of the world's uranium supply. Even before the war started, our khan put more than 300 people in the ground to preserve his rule (many of them random women and children; and that's according to official sources whom everyone considers to be seriously biased), and your politicians looked the other way because it didn't tip the scales far enough.

> While Kazakhstan is not fully supporting Russia, turning away from it seems like an economic suicide.

Obviously they're not going to cut all ties, but it's a good time for Kazakhs (or any other ex-Soviet population still in the Russian orbit) to renegotiate contracts. The bear is in a position of weakness both on diplomatic, economic, and military terms.

Possibly that's a "lien" then rather than seizure?

> A claim upon a part of another's property that arises because of an unpaid debt related to that property and that operates as an encumbrance on the property until the debt is satisfied.

The original "news" are from some Telegram channel from Mar 4.

Almost everywhere there is an absolutely identical text, without sources.

I couldn't find anything remotely similar in .kz

While Kazakhstan is not fully supporting Russia, turning away from it seems like an economic suicide.

How so?

60% of the Kazahk economy is from oil and gas.† It's not like it's exporting that stuff to Russia.

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan#/media/File:Kazakhs...

but 40% of import is. I live in KZ and in a recent talk my fellow Russian expats mentioned this topic. I checked what items in my rented apartment are made in Russia. Except clothes, shoes and computer devices and furniture, which is produced locally, everything in the kitchen is from Russia: tea, porriges, tools (like plastic funnel, which is even from Moscow!), even a can of salt is from there. Just 2-3 were not from RU.

For example, IKEA stores in Russia ordered furniture by their designs from local makers. This was imported in KZ. Now they're gone, and IKEA items are either brought from Turkey, or the Russian factories started making something roughly similar, but it's not branded/quality controlled.

Some imports (from China or even Turkey) went via Russian logistics as well, and only the last year started to be re-routed.

Kazakhstan's economy is dominated by the oil and gas industry. If anything, it competes with Russia economically. As it develops alternative transportation networks, economic independence from Russia will benefit it, not harm it.

As far as I know, major (overwhelming?) part of Kazakhstan oil and gas is transported via Russian pipes. They were used as a tool to press on Kazakhstan in the past. Yes, alternative networks are being developed, but that takes a lot of time.

Kazakhstan has been steadily moving into China’s political orbit where it will be safe from any Russian retaliation.

At the very least, this is KZ testing waters how much they can piss of RU.

I guess the story got deleted as it was a fake!

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