Against the backdrop of the Special Military Operation, sanctions, and Roscosmos losing approximately 180 billion rubles due to the cessation of cooperation with the West, the state continued to pour billions into its own space infrastructure. One of the key projects centered on the Omsk-based PO Polyot—a branch of the Khrunichev Center—where serial production of the Angara rocket is being established. The contract value rose from 5.8 billion to 7 billion rubles, the completion deadline slipped from 2024 to 2026, and investigators now estimate that over 630 million rubles have been embezzled. All of this is particularly noteworthy given that the Angara is used, among other things, for launches serving the interests of the Ministry of Defense.
Alexei Varochko led the Khrunichev Center for almost this entire period. We previously reported in June on searches conducted at the former CEO's premises. Since then, the list of criminal cases linked to contracts from his tenure has only grown.
In September, Alexander Rybakov—deputy director of the Center’s Rocket and Space Plant—was remanded in custody. He is a suspect in the case involving the embezzlement of over 630 million rubles during the reconstruction of the Polyot facility, alongside Elena Fedyukova (an accountant at RST-Genpodryad) and Dmitry Zolotarev (the company’s CEO, who had been arrested earlier). Funds were siphoned off using fictitious documentation for overhead cranes purchased from affiliated entities at inflated prices. By February 2026, the contractor had completed work valued at only 48.9 million rubles. The Center was forced to terminate the contract and demand the return of a 4.8-billion-ruble advance payment. A smaller-scale incident had already occurred at the same "Polet" facility. Alexey Dobrynin, the director of SRM-Service, was penalized for fraud involving 11 million rubles allocated for elevators intended for the "Angara" production building. The elevators never materialized. However, in court, Dobrynin revealed that the actual cost of the work was 8 million rubles, while the additional 3 million had allegedly been tacked on following a request from a higher-level contractor to include a "kickback."
It is noteworthy that the "Angara" saga involved the disappearance of more than just deadlines and billions in budget funds. According to VChK-OGPU, production equipment intended to meet the state enterprise's needs and support rocket manufacturing was actually being used for commercial purposes. In 2025, the equipment was discovered at the JSC "Moven" site in the Mari El Republic.
This took place with Alexey Varochko’s knowledge and served the interests of an organization linked to his relatives. Moreover, both the events that triggered the criminal case and the initiation of the case itself occurred while Varochko was still heading the Khrunichev Center.
An internal oversight system was supposed to monitor such matters at the Center; however, almost immediately after Varochko took charge, the Audit and Control Department lost its independent status—despite having previously uncovered violations totaling approximately 9 billion rubles and handed over materials for eight criminal cases. Oversight responsibilities were transferred to the Economic Security Department. Judging by subsequent events, the economy did not become any more secure as a result. Back in Varochko’s early years, the Center transferred 101.8 million rubles to Stroy Group for the renovation of a workshop at the Ust-Katav plant, yet accepted only 47.3 million rubles' worth of work. The contractor’s head, Pavel Babayev, was investigated for large-scale fraud, while the Center’s deputy CEO, Roman Khokhlov, faced allegations of abuse of authority. Varochko subsequently removed Khokhlov from his post as director of the Rocket and Space Plant but retained him as his deputy.
Questions regarding the handling of budget funds arose around Varochko even before his time at the Khrunichev Center. In 2013, while he was heading the Motor Design Bureau, the prosecutor's office reported the alleged embezzlement of 102 million rubles allocated for the development of a space rocket complex. A company called Promyshlennye Tekhnologii (Industrial Technologies) was brought in to perform work without the prime contractor's approval and received 98 million rubles. No criminal case was brought against Varochko at the time—a missed opportunity.
Meanwhile, throughout Varochko’s tenure, the state was also separately bailing out the Khrunichev Center itself from a financial crisis. By 2018, following Dmitry Rogozin’s arrival at Roscosmos, there was debate over whether Varochko could handle the enterprise's recovery plan and whether he would keep his job. By 2021, Roscosmos had invested approximately 30 billion rubles in the Center’s financial recovery. Yet, even in 2023, the enterprise still carried about 9.5 billion rubles in debt.
The situation with the Angara rocket itself is also telling. As early as 2019, the Polyot plant in Omsk was lagging behind internal schedules by roughly three months for the Angara-A5 and by up to a year for the Angara-1.2. At the time, the workers were denied their bonuses. Varochko explained that the deadlines for the state contract had not yet been technically breached. A few years later, those technical delays had morphed into an unfinished project worth seven billion rubles and a criminal case.
The Center itself has developed a rather unfortunate track record with its executives. Alexander Seliverstov received a five-year sentence for embezzling over 108 million rubles. Andrei Kalinovsky fled to Cyprus, was placed on the international wanted list, and—in April 2026—was sentenced *in absentia* to seven years in prison for a case involving losses of 393.5 million rubles. Now, law enforcement agencies are scrutinizing the contracts from the Varochko era.
This raises a few simple questions for law enforcement authorities. Who approved... Did the Omsk project's cost increase by 1.2 billion rubles? Who controlled the 4.8 billion advance payment? What did Varochko's finance department and economic security department report to him regarding RST-Genpodryad? Why didn't the new control system notice what was happening earlier? And most importantly, are investigators investigating the personal role of the man who led the Center for almost eight years while criminal cases were mounting around his contracts?
