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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

There's been a sad habit of the Russian state nationalizing industries, reforming them as state-run corps, handing the reins to one of Putin's friends and then looting them of anything valuable. This doesn't bode well for the Russian space program.

To add a bit more value to my shorter post, here is a partial list of the extreme corruption in industries that Putin's government has gifted to friends of the President;

Russian Railways: http://www.reuters.com/article/russia-capitalism-railways-sp...

Gunvor Energy Trading: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8175406/...

Bank Rossiya: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/world/europe/it-pays-to-be...

Gazprom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazprom#Establishment_of_gover...

Etc. etc. As a final comparison.. The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver cost ~$1.7B Canadian.. The Sochi Olympics cost upwards of $51B.

The scale of graft is staggering.

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Well, the space industry in Russia was never privatised in the first place.

And I am afraid that moving parts of Khrunichev Institute out of Moscow (for example — it happens independently of top-level restructuring) will deal more damage than formal rearrangement of top-level control.

Roscosmos, no, but Energomash was allegedly partially privately owned and operated until the consolidation in 2013;

http://spacenews.com/russia-moves-forward-with-industry-cons...

I'm with you on the rest though, more than just changing the board members, dismantling the education pipeline or installing lackeys in the production facilities will do much more long term harm.

then looting them of anything valuable Those were the oligarchs who came to power in the 90's. He turned against them shortly after he became president and is currently consolidating power for himself in a very, very large country that's had petty competing centers of power since the collapse of the USSR.

There was obviously the big wave of privatization and corruption after the USSR fell, but lately it's been re-nationalization and pseudo state corps financed by state banks.. The companies take large loans from the government banks, steal most of the money through contracts with various shell corps and then get bailed out. A wholly different but very serious problem.

> Those were the oligarchs who came to power in the 90's.

This is a simplification that putin's propaganda machine loves so much. Today's Russia isn't much different from the 90s, except the portrayal in tv and the fact that instead of looting soviet relics, raiders destroy succesfull companies that have been built in the last 20 years.

Oligarchs from the 90s are nothing compared to oligarchs we have right now. Russia has never been more corrupt and dysfunctional.

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