- Let's not beat around the bush. Whose advice can you rely on while Ivan Safronov is languishing in jail?

In my group of advisers there are some two dozen people. It's a cohort of top-notch specialists in different fields of knowledge, who help me exercise personal control of different activities by Roscosmos’ divisions. There are engineers, designers, lawyers, economists and IT experts…

- Was the loss sensitive for the team?

- Of course. Roscosmos' head office was stunned when everybody heard the news on TV about Safronov's arrest…

- Are you saying that you had not received any prior warning; that you heard about it on the news?

- Yes, like everybody else on our staff.

- What was your immediate reaction?

Surprise. Any person who is hired by a public corporation, even to fill a position not involving access to classified information, undergoes a security clearance. We have a special unit - several departments responsible for security, and the protection of state secrets and economic security. They are professionals, including career security service officers. I'd presumed that such filters were effective enough.

- What type of security clearance did Safronov have?

- He had no access to any secrets. Нis chief task was to keep in touch with his colleagues in the media business, with the professional community. Ivan was hired to perform this kind of work.

He was given a position in the press service as my adviser and obtained no special security clearance. But let me say once again that all of the CEO's close contacts are checked first thing. Then a report is presented to me that there are no arguments against employment.

- Have you known each other for a long time?

- According to my recollection, since 2012. I joined the government as a deputy prime minister in December 2011. At first, there were some rifts and grudges…

- On whose side?

What makes you think I may have something against a journalist?

- Different types of situations can occur.

- Yes, some particularly touchy officials never miss a chance to crack down on the media, but such attempts always look strange. You know that my first major is in international journalism, right? I’m in this line of business myself. Many of the guys who were my university buddies have won acclaim as excellent professionals. Say, Alexei Denisov, a great reporter. Andrei Martynov, Dmitry Sabov, and Boris Kostenko, I have deep respect for the journalistic community, where there are many inquisitive and bold people, some of them with frontline experience. I chanced to be at some trouble spots myself where I could see reporters in action.

 - Would you please finish that phrase about rifts and grudges…

- In 2012, Kommersant daily, where Safronov worked at that moment, published several articles under his name that were somewhat critical of me.

At a certain point, I got curious. I presumed that the man might have been misled and did not understand certain things. I'd never thought that Safronov might harbor any malicious designs or had been given instructions to discredit me. I invited him to a meeting. He came to my office and we shook hands.

- Who introduced you to each other?

- It so happened that Vladimir Popovkin, the then chief of the Federal Space Agency and a subordinate of mine, was Ivan's close acquaintance. They were on very close terms, almost relatives.
We met and had a chat. After that a certain distance in relations remained, but nevertheless, I've always recognized Safronov as a professional.

- Did the tone of his articles change afterwards?

- Not in an instant, but after sometime. Then there was a tragedy. Vladimir Popovkin suffered serious chemical poisoning at the Baikonur space site in July 2013, when a Proton rocket fell apart at the launch pad. It was a major high-profile accident. Vladimir developed a grave, lethal disease.

Very soon he resigned. About one month before his death we met and Popovkin asked me to help Ivan. He told me: "He is still a very young man. He lacks experience and quite often he may ask for trouble. Look after him, please." It was the will of a dying man. I've always remembered his request.

Safronov is a well-informed journalist. He had excellent sources. Incidentally, he never shared them with anybody. [He] never disclosed the names of people who shared information with him. Several times I had contacted Ivan through my press-secretary to advise him against certain publications that might have been potentially harmful. There was very sensitive information involved, although it was not secret.

- Did he ask you for advice or for double-checked information?

- Ivan listened to us, and to other specialists, too. In contrast to many colleagues who write about such sensitive issues as the country's defense, he always behaved himself, although I think that some officials often found his articles annoying. On the very first day after his arrest I said that I have no doubts about Safronov's decency and professionalism.

- Ivan's colleagues just recently held a campaign of collecting signatures in his support. Some say they asked you to sign the petition, too.

- No. Nobody asked me for that.

- And what if they did?

 - I would ponder about whether this sort of support might have any possibilities to succeed, although frankly speaking I doubt it would be of any use.

- Why? The man has been at the Lefortovo detention center for several months now. No word in his support would be redundant… Have you had any personal contacts with Ivan during this period of time?

- No, but our lawyers keep in touch with Safronov's.

- Were the lawyers hired by Roscosmos?

- We considered the possibility of protecting the interests of the organization. From the very outset there were statements that his arrest was not connected with Safronov's activity in Roscosmos, so we had no reasons to regard ourselves as a party to this case.

I feel great respect for counter-intelligence and foreign intelligence. In my family there are people who served in this system - special service veterans. My father-in-law was an officer at the Soviet KGB’s First Main Directorate Focusing on American Policy. A man of honor.

I'm personally acquainted with many of our intelligence and counter-intelligence officers, because I chaired the State Duma's international affairs committee, I served as ambassador to NATO, and I had contacts with our station chiefs whose job was to maintain the operation of the intelligence community. In a word, I'm very familiar with the specifics of this work and I've never had any reasons to distrust their information. On the other hand, there is the presumption of innocence. As long as there is no sufficient evidence to the contrary, I believe that Ivan Safronov is fully entitled to the protection of honor, dignity and freedom, of course.

- Is this the reason why he still remains your adviser?

- Precisely. And he will remain in his current position until the court's verdict is handed down. I do hope for his acquittal.

True, in the history of our intelligence there were cases of betrayal by people who had been trusted 100%. Everything is possible in this world. There is no immunity against treason. But in his particular case, let me say this once again, I have no reasons to change my opinion of Ivan Safronov, whom I've known for many years as a decent person and a professional journalist. I do not believe that he [committed] treason, I although I foresee a possibility that the investigation may prove otherwise. Then we will draw certain conclusions, including some regarding the people whose job is to timely and correctly inform the corporation's management about those who apply for a job.

- But this is not the first case during your career at Roscosmos of a company employee being charged with high treason, is it?

- No, we had no such incidents. At TsNIIMash, our leading research center, one of its scientists, Viktor Kudryavtsev, was arrested shortly after I joined the company. Incidentally, the research institute's staff put in a word for him, too.

- The investigation has now been put on hold.

- I'll try to explain to you what the problem is… At a meeting with the institute's personnel I was asked a question about Kudryavtsev. I said honestly that I'd long been worried by the problem of how the performance of our scientists was rated, in particular, the so-called Hirsch Index. Our specialists are obliged to prove their professionalism and efficiency with the number of publications in "authoritative scientific periodicals" in the West.

Any specialist who conducts sensitive research in fact walks a tightrope and the runs the risk of getting into hot water while trying to demonstrate the value of his achievements. When I was Russia's envoy to NATO in Brussels, I had many chances to see in the alliance's magazines some articles by our scientists that I found very undesirable. For the sake of an extra publication that helps earn a higher Hirsch rating some people blabbed out certain things they should've kept quiet about.

There are very clear yardsticks. Classification markings are often attached to pieces of information that are already available from open sources. Individual facts do not constitute a secret, but the results of their analysis may be a secret that enables foreign secret services draw certain conclusions.

For instance, we have our sector-oriented magazine Russky Kosmos, which contains many professional publications of great interest, including some that address purely engineering issues. Before each new edition is authorized for print, a special panel convenes to check if it contains information that is classified secret or meant for official use only. Then yours truly as the company's CEO signs a special paper - my consent with the experts' opinion the periodical does not contain any sensitive information.

- Do you have to reject articles often?

- I do this regularly. I trust my specialists and their opinion. There should be no place for risk in such matters.

- Let’s wrap up the topic of transgressions. You were the one who initiated the Audit Chamber's inspection of the space rocket corporation Energia in 2018. Why did you set your sights on this corporation from the get-go?

- When I still held the deputy prime minister's post, I kept asking myself why Energia never managed to accomplish any serious job on time. Say, the development of a new generation of crewed spacecraft. It was scheduled to fly in 2021. That was the deadline. When in 2017 it became clear that the flight would not take place as expected, somebody sparked a rumor that for some technical reasons, the spacecraft must be paired with a different launch vehicle. In fact, they had failed to meet the deadline or otherwise messed up the task and preferred to address a new proposal to their superiors. The decision-makers gave it the go-ahead without proper scrutiny. In the end, the deadlines were revised again. We've now restored order and are obliged to carry out the launch in 2023. Had the Energia corporation observed financial discipline and arranged its own work better, the flight might have become possible much earlier.

- In other words, it was you who sent the ex-chief of the Energia corporation Solntsev to jail?

- Criminal proceedings were initiated on the basis of an inspection carried out by Roscosmos' internal auditing service. I created it myself and invited the most experienced people from the prosecutor's office into it. The service's findings resulted in the opening of 22 criminal cases over two years.

Inspections are launched at my sole discretion. The results are reported to me personally. Then I make a decision whether to hand the case over to the law enforcement authorities. In this particular situation, I found the reasons to do so were serious enough.

- Is it realistic to hope some of the losses can be recovered?

- The Vostochny spaceport is an example. Some losses can be compensated for, but only to an extent. Very serious charges were brought against Yuri Khrizman, the former chief of the Dalspetsstroi contractor, and his son. The losses are estimated at nearly one billion rubles. Only a portion is recoverable. 

- What does the internal auditing service look like?

-  Let me explain. Before I took over Roscosmos there was a department that was entirely focused on accounting. I reorganized it to considerably expand its functions. The quality of work improved. Some high-profile cases were exposed. Charges were brought against the Lavochkin research and industrial association, Tekhnomash, the research and testing center of the space rocket industry RKP, the Progress Rocket Space Center in Samara, the Geofizkia central design bureau in Krasnoyarsk… The same applies to the Energia space rocket corporation. Regrettably, in this industry, a situation emerged where a handful of people could use mammoth funds without any supervision. A manager's personal honesty had to be relied on. This is not the most reliable yardstick of all. 

- Will there be more cases?

- Of course. Some probes are underway. Everybody should remember my zero tolerance of theft and corruption. I've always said that this is a far more dangerous ill than the NATO or US military threat. Roscosmos is responsible for the creation of combat missiles and produces the hardware of the country's strategic nuclear potential. This means that thieves in fact harm the country's defenses. This is an act of betrayal and treason. I find this far more worrisome than publications in magazines or technical information leaks to the West.

We will push ahead with our crusade against corruption. Far from everybody is happy about my standpoint. This explains the hostile campaign in both official mass media and anonymous Telegram channels. The flow of calumnies is heavy, but I no longer read the stuff, because I've realized why all this is happening and who is the mastermind. The harder the line I take to restore order to the industry, the louder the irresponsible noises in the mass media become. It’s a smear campaign against me.

My military specialization in university was special propaganda. I know that discrediting a leader is one of the most important methods of achieving victory by non-military means. There have been attempts to stop me, but in my case they do not work. Firstly, I am man of character and, secondly, my political experience does not let me react to such dirty tricks.

Nevertheless, the decisions and measures we take are to be explained to society. It would be wrong to remain idle onlookers.

- How large is the internal auditing department?

- Twelve people. This is not very much. It is their skills and competence that really matters.