This is outdated, unfortunately. The Russian space program has suffered from immense brain-drain, budget cuts, and corruption, all of which have worn it down over 30 years and resulted in vastly reduced quality control.

In the past handful of years, on ISS alone, there have been: * Progress coolant leak * Soyuz coolant leak * Nauka module rogue thruster sending entire station spinning out of control * Soyuz hull leak * Launch failure with two crew aboard * Various low-grade problems on older modules especially Zvezda

I might be forgetting something, that’s just off the top of my head. No, this amount of serious issues is not normal “space is hard” stuff, and nowhere near as many problems have happened with any of the other ISS partner countries.

This is not to mention a steady rise in unscrewed launch failures, especially for Proton but also for Soyuz. Russia was pissing away its dominant position in commercial launch long before sanctions.

The once-great Soviet space program is dying with the world’s longest whimper.