The war on Ukraine could have major consequences on Russia's role as a space actor
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.
A key component of the US and European response were economic sanctions targeting, among others, the Russian space sector, the US ones with the explicit intention to degrade the Russian space program.
Roscosmos, the Russian State Corporation for Space Activities, reacted by suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, and by announcing that it will no longer supply rocket engines to US and service those already delivered.
Although both Europe (more) and US (less) will be impacted, I guess the real victim here is the Russian space program. Roscosmos has shown itself to be an unreliable partner, and the move dried out an important source of funds without which the Russian space sector might not survive in the long term.
Roscosmos is the Russian space sector, because there are no private space enterprises due to "years of anemic investments and adverse legal frameworks that prevent any sustainable business strategy or achieving any significant results in advanced technologies and manufacturing". Therefore, under the current circumstances the chances to innovate and achieve the necessary and much desired cost reductions are virtually nil.
In 2013, the Russian government formed the United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) to provide state supervision to the troubled and failure-prone space sector, with "productivity eight times lower than in America, with companies duplicating each others’ work and operating at about 40 percent efficiency". In 2015/6 it was merged with the Russian Federal Space Agency to create the current state corporation. This didn't seem to have helped much in reforming the industry : an inquiry conducted in 2020 revealed that URSC failed in its core tasks ("since 2018, none of the core projects had been implemented") while providing lavish benefits to its management.
The money woes of the Russian space program do not end with mismanagement; it is also chronically underfunded, but this was partially offset by the windfalls from renting seats to the International Space Station (ISS) in its Soyuz capsules and from selling Soyuz rocket engines. This income source was gradually drying out, and the war on Ukraine put an end to it.
As a result, Russia is no longer at the technological forefront : an article from December 2021 describes Russia's space program a "wasteful, increasingly decrepit enterprise where almost no money is being invested into the present or future", with "a shortage of competent and highly qualified staff, obsolete facilities and technology, and systemic leadership weakness". The same article notes that "Roscosmos is struggling even to build its mainstay vehicles, the Soyuz rockets and Progress spacecraft, and "relies on Germany to help fuel the Soyuz rocket and the Soyuz spacecraft that launches humans".
The same technological decay has been noted elsewhere : the Russian space program is described as having "a worse record than any other major space power", and the overall assessment is one of "unreliability in technical execution".
Ever since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia has lost access to key components from Ukraine (used for the Soyuz rockets, the ISS, and for Russia‘s main intercontinental ballistic missile, SS18), NATO, and Europe; the import substitution program initiated to compensate for the loss had only limited success. After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, sanctions will hit supplies of microelectronics, but Russia hopes to receive those from China.
Despite the bleak outlook and the strain on its finances, Russia will not entirely abandon its space program, because "space activities, along with nuclear weapons and veto power on the UN Security Council, are among the foundations of Russia’s high status in world politics", and "the sustainability of Russia’s current political system depends to a large extent on maintaining this status". In the absence of noteworthy technological achievements, Russia's civilian space program appears to have shifted towards the attention economy, not only through is provocative chief, and "seeks to project its greatness in space through symbolic acts, such as the launch of a Russian movie star, sending a robot nicknamed Fedor to space, or making hollow promises about a Moon landing in 2030".
The decision to scale down the program and focus on military and dual-use spacecraft is perhaps an acknowledgement of chronically and severely restricted resources, as well as an attempt to stamp out (at least a major part of) systemic inefficiencies and corruption. The expected level of success is rather low, as it seems that Russian military capabilities in space appear to be in decline for some time. Thus, withdrawing behind the veil of secrecy of military projects makes sense because what is then left for the world to see is an empty screen on which it can project its fears, which coalesce in the overblown image of Russians doing terrible things in the shadows.
So where does it leave Russia? As summarized by one analyst, "without an international cooperation deal, and as long as Western sanctions are maintained, prospects for Russia’s space industry look bleak".
The only country that is still willing to cooperate with Russia is China, recently described as a. "supplier of vital space industry components and a partner in upcoming missions". Nevertheless, despite intense agreement-signing since 2001, and publicity for their "vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind", the relationship does not appear to have much substance. This is due, on one hand, to the political psychologies of the two parties, and on the other hand, to the fact that Russia has nothing to offer China in terms of space equipment or technology.
The psycho-political limits to Russian and Chinese cooperation are thus described : "both Russia and China are religious about their strategic autonomy; there is deep-seated nationalism, there is some level of mistrust and some level of competition in many of those areas where there is seeming complementarity, like space programs [...] these advances in military technology are happening mostly in parallel, but not jointly". Or elsewhere : "The Russia–China space relationship cannot be called trust-based. On the one hand, the Chinese approach rules out the possibility of interdependence in the space domain. Cooperation can be based either on China obtaining the technology and equipment it needs from its partner (in which case concessions are possible as long as the partner has something to sell) or on unconditional Chinese dominance. Russia has based its space policy precisely on interdependence since the collapse of the Soviet Union, similarly to the US and EU, and it cannot afford unilateral dependence on China’s crewed space programme. [...] Political considerations play an important role here: such unilateral dependence undermines not only Russia’s otherwise high status in international relations but also its domestic political legitimacy."
China has consistently surpassed Russia in terms of budget (9 versus 2.7 billion USD in 2020), successful launches (more than twice as many : 35-17 in 2020, and 49-23 in 2021), and major projects (China landed a rover on Mars on its first try, while every Russian attempt to reach Mars since 1990 has failed; China retrieved lunar soil samples already in 2020, while the similar Russian project will not be completed until after 2025; the Russian Yenisei super heavy lift launch vehicle is quite likely cancelled, all while China’s similar Changzheng 9 nears its planned 2030 test launch).
But in such a case, what is the role and value of Russia in this partnership? Its contribution in the form of prestige or advanced technology would be limited at best. Up until recently, it could have provided China with a potential lever to derail various US and especially European space projects, because Russia was so intertwined with them. Perhaps their expected contribution is still in the area of disruption and denial of other nations' access to space, via operational concepts or capabilities more subtle than anti-satellite missiles (like the satellite inspectors), that operate in the grey area below the threshold of war.
Points for Europe's consideration
Russia looks like a waning, proud, nostalgic, and insecure space power, willing to go down in flames.
Europe might want to degrade its technological future and innovative potential, increasing its own in the process - for example by attracting the Russian raising talents.
Perhaps the best for Europe would be a weakened Russia, not too weak though as to be forced to relinquish its strategic autonomy and become a junior partner in a partnership with China. Also, to check its aggressive potential, cooperation should be maintained, and Russia should be given a stake in the success of European and US projects. Equally important, Europe and especially US should not rub in their ever-growing technological lead, and continue to treat Russia with the same professional cordiality as before.
The current events have also highlighted the limits of the concept of non-dependence - the possibility for Europe to have free, unrestricted access to any required space technology. It was rooted in a worldview where politics and economics are mostly disconnected (ostensibly confirmed by the continued cooperation with Russia even in the context of economic sanctions), and assumed a well-integrated global economy. But this set of axioms must have been seriously shaken first by Trump's willingness to initiate a trade war with Europe, and second by the impact of COVID on global supply chains. The final blow comes from the resurfacing of the age-old principle that politics trumps economics, as illustrated by Roscosmos decision to adopt a patriotic stance and self-inflict economic damage by severing cooperation with both Europe and US.
It seems that it is about time for Europe to move further in the direction of autonomy.