Economist, ‘heartthrob,’ and plagiarist Who is Dmitry Bakanov, the new head of Russia’s state space agency Roscosmos?

On February 6, the Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had dismissed Yury Borisov from his post as director general of Roscosmos, Russia’s state space agency. He was replaced by 39-year-old Dmitry Bakanov, who previously served as the country’s deputy transport minister and headed a Roscosmos subsidiary. Meduza summarizes reporting from BBC News Russian and other outlets about Bakanov’s past and what this leadership change could mean for Russia’s space program.

Dmitry Bakanov is the third person to lead Roscosmos since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. His predecessor, Yury Borisov, was appointed head of Roscosmos in July 2022 after serving as deputy prime minister overseeing the defense industry and, before that, as deputy defense minister.

According to RBC, which cited informed sources, most Roscosmos employees only learned of Borisov’s replacement on Thursday morning. “It all happened in one evening,” a source told the outlet, adding that the personnel changes came amid uncertainty over the parameters for constructing the National Space Center being built on the grounds of Moscow’s Khrunichev State Research and Production Center, which manufactures spacecraft.

Borisov had been tasked with reforming Russia’s space industry, but under his leadership, the country continued to fall behind other space-faring nations. BBC News Russia noted that in 2023, Russia launched just 17 rockets into space — despite Borisov’s announcement in early 2024 that 40 launches were planned.

A full plate

Dmitry Bakanov, the new head of Roscosmos, was born in 1985. According to his official biography published by RIA Novosti, he graduated in 2007 from St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance with a degree in economics.

Bakanov is no stranger to Roscosmos structures; in the 2010s, he spent several years leading its satellite communications subsidiary, Gonets.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described the leadership change as a routine “rotation.” “We have no complaints against Yury Borisov. This is a rotation — the corporation needs to develop dynamically,” state news agency TASS quoted him as saying. Peskov added that Vladimir Putin has no plans to meet with Bakanov in the coming days.

According to BBC Russian military analyst Pavel Aksyonov, Bakanov’s appointment aligns with Russia’s new priorities in space. “Moscow is focused on building a satellite constellation primarily for communications and remote sensing,” he wrote.

“Russia lags far behind the world’s leading space powers, the U.S. and China, in the number of satellites,” Aksyonov continued. “As of early 2025, the Moscow Space Club estimated there were 8,393 American satellites in orbit, 990 Chinese ones, and just 307 Russian ones.”

He noted that while the U.S. has numerous private companies driving innovation in space, “Russia’s space activities have traditionally been dominated by state enterprises.”

Aksyonov also said that one of Yury Borisov’s goals was to foster cooperation between private businesses and state-owned companies. On July 22, 2024, Vladimir Putin signed a law on public-private partnerships in space activities.

“However, in a February 2024 interview with the portal PROKosmos, Borisov stated that satellites — including the ones for the Gonets project — would still be produced at state enterprises, specifically Information Satellite Systems and NPO Lavochkin,” he said.

Aksyonov explained that other experts interviewed by BBC believe that, in its current form, Roscosmos is both unable and unwilling to allow private companies to enter the space industry.

“Bakanov’s primary task will likely be to establish mass production of satellites — something Borisov failed to achieve in two and a half years,” he said. “But this will not be easy. Roscosmos enterprises have been under sanctions since 2014, which has hampered satellite production. After 2022, the sanctions regime tightened further, impacting the few private Russian space companies still in the market.”

A propaganda darling

Meanwhile, multiple Russian propaganda channels on Telegram have focused on a completely different aspect of the new Roscosmos chief: his looks.

“A heated debate has erupted online over the appearance of Roscosmos’s new head, Dmitry Bakanov. Some are calling him a stunning alpha heartthrob, while others don’t see what all the fuss is about,” wrote the channel Shot, asking followers to rate Bakanov with emoji reactions.

Another channel, Ruthless Publicist, put Bakanov on a list of candidates for a “Ministry of Handsome Men.”

However, according to the project Dissernet, Bakanov could be all style and no substance. The project’s director, Andrei Zayakin, told Agentstvo Media that the Russian State Library holds only the abstract of his university dissertation, not the whole thing — and that nearly half of the abstract’s pages contain plagiarized material.

“Under the regulations for awarding academic degrees — both in their previous and current versions — the full text of a defended dissertation must be submitted to the Russian State Library. However, this never happened in Bakanov’s case,” Agentstvo wrote, noting that the university Bakanov attended frequently failed to send in defended dissertations.

“If the abstract is copied, then the full dissertation is even more likely to be plagiarized,” the outlet quoted Zayakin as saying.