Usov won the agency through a competition that drew 18 contenders in late November 2019. The Cabinet of Ministers declared him the winner on December 27; the order appointing him for five years with a six-month probation was signed on January 24, 2020, and he was introduced to the staff on February 5. By the time of the interview, according to Usov, the agency had a window of opportunity of a year or two. If not used, the potential, the capacity and the people would disappear.
Seventeen enterprises and eight loss-making
According to the 2019 report, of the SSAU’s seventeen enterprises, eight are loss-making and two are being liquidated. Usov named five to seven as strong: Yuzhmash, Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, Hartron, Kommunar and Arsenal Design Bureau. Yuzhmash currently has only two space projects: first stages for NASA’s Antares rocket and engines for the European Space Agency’s Vega. According to Usov, there are plans to create a European production hub on the plant’s premises.
Already after his appointment, on February 5, Usov first presented to the agency’s staff a plan that he detailed further in the interview. Its main pillars: a five-year program, corporatization of the enterprises and an accelerator for space startups. He hoped to submit the program to the Verkhovna Rada “most likely in the summer.” Usov distinguished corporatization from transferring the enterprises to private owners and emphasized the difference directly:
“Corporatization is not privatization”
He named as goals for 2020 the adoption of the program, the launch of the accelerator and attracting at least ten private companies, as well as the first steps toward access to space and toward an own satellite constellation. Over five years, according to his plan, Ukraine should achieve independent access to space.
Money
Formally, the 2020 budget for three areas totals a little more than 600 million hryvnias, but in reality it is ten times less. The story of rocket fuel disposal is telling: 160 million hryvnias were requested, 30 million are being allocated, and even that is for storage, not disposal. According to Usov’s estimate, the industry needs at least five billion hryvnias a year, half from investors and half from the state. The program that was never adopted cost 10 billion hryvnias.
Usov considers the Lybid satellite an unrealistic project. A decision is awaited from the London arbitration, and the spacecraft can only be launched from Baikonur on a rocket that physically does not exist. The joint Ukrainian-Brazilian project at the Brazilian Alcantara spaceport dragged on for fifteen years, and Usov called this unacceptable. For context: a $292 million loan for Lybid was issued in 2009 and repaid by the state in 2019, meaning no new funds were allocated for the project in 2020.
In the interview, Usov also mentioned lunar plans. Yuzhnoye Design Bureau is preparing a project for an industrial lunar base, and among private players in this field he named Firefly, Skyrora and startups.
A warning and subsequent events
Usov concluded the interview with a direct warning that UNIAN’s editors put in the headline: “If reforms in the space industry are not carried out drastically today, then in a few years there will be no such industry in Ukraine.” His appointment took place against the backdrop of a criminal case about school textbooks being investigated by the State Bureau of Investigations. Searches at Usov’s own home and office took place in December 2019, before his appointment, as TSN reported. None of the sources alleges suspicions personally against Usov, and there is no verdict in the case.
Usov did not see his work at the agency through to the end. On November 16, 2020, the government dismissed him under Article 87 of the law on civil service, and Mykhailo Lev became acting head of the SSAU.
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