Posted on: Sunday, 20 July 2008, 15:00 CDT
Text of report by corporate-owned Russian military news agency Interfax-AVN website
Baykonur (Kazakhstan), 16 July: The discontinuation of military units and the transfer of [Russian] Defence Ministry facilities located at the Baykonur space launch site to enterprises of the Russian space rocket sector will be completed in the autumn of this year.
“The transfer of Defence Ministry facilities has begun this month and should be completed in late November 2008,” a source at the Baykonur space launch site has told Interfax-AVN.
The source said the schedule of transfer of launch site facilities from the military to enterprises of the space rocket sector and the town administration had been agreed at meeting of representatives of the Defence Ministry and Roskosmos [Russian Federal Space Agency] held at Baykonur on Tuesday [15 July].
Under the agreements reached [at the meeting], the source told the agency, the Krayniy aerodrome will be transferred to the centre for the use of ground space infrastructure, while the facilities of the missile test units of the launch site (the inhabited area and the launch silos for UR-100N (RS-18) missiles will be transferred to the NPO Mashinostroyeniya (Machine-Building Research and Production Association).
The remaining facilities, i.e. the buildings and structures of the Russian Defence Ministry, will be accepted by Roskosmos enterprises and the town administration, the source told the agency..
The Fifth State Space Test Launch Site of the Russian Federation Defence Ministry (the Baykonur space launch site) will be discontinued by 1 January 2009. After that date, about 250 servicemen of more than 1,000 currently serving at Baykonur will stay on at the space launch site. Some of them will be transferred to the reserve, while others will be moved to new service postings in Russia.
Once the military structures at the launch site have been discontinued, it will operate purely as a civilian enterprise.
Originally published by Interfax-AVN military news agency website, Moscow, in Russian 1158 20 Jul 08.
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Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union