Russian Cosmonaut Training Center wants to be part of military again - source
KOROLYOV, near Moscow. Aug 6 (Interfax-AVN) - The Cosmonaut Training Center has asked the Defense Ministry to take it back under its jurisdiction, a space industry source said on Wednesday.
At a meeting with Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov, Cosmonaut Training Center chief Yury Lonchakov and head of Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Oleg Ostapenko, proposed that the center be returned under Defense Ministry jurisdiction and become a military organization, the source told Interfax-AVN.
The proposal was also raised at a conference at the Cosmonaut Training Center last week.
However, no decision had been made yet, the source said.
After the Cosmonaut Training Center became a civilian organization, a large proportion of its personnel quit and went over to the military. The center argues that this has caused its professional standards to go down.
"If the Cosmonaut Training Center returns under the wing of the Ministry of Defense, servicemen, including cosmonauts, will be returned into the military service with their military ranks restored, and the head of the center, Yury Lonchakov, who has the rank of colonel, might, just as the latest military head of the center, Vasily Tsibliyev, expect to be promoted to general," the source said.
