Its formation was decreed by the president on March 24, 2000. Colonel-General Anatoli Perminov, who has recently become head of the Federal Space Agency, was appointed the commander of the Space Troops.
This was said on Wednesday by Alexei Kuznetsov, official spokesman for the Space Troops.
Today their units are - the cosmodromes Plesetsk (southern Arkhangelsk region in the north of European Russia), Baikonur (southern Kazakhstan), Svobodny (Amur region in the south of Russia's Far East), the German Titov Main Centre for Testing and Control of Space Means, the Mozhaiski Military Space Academy, the Pushkino Savitski Military Radioelectronics Institute, the Moscow Military Institute, Peter the Great Military Space Cadet Corps, several specialised space defence units.
"The Space Troops' complexes and systems fulfil with success missions of the national and strategic scope in the interest of the Armed Forces and other Russian power ministries", Kuznetsov noted.
In 2003 combat crews in the Baikonur and Plesetsk cosmodromes performed eight and ensured the performance of 12 space rocket launches, put into orbit 12 spacecraft in the interest of the Russian Defence Ministry, eight satellites of socio-economic importance, ten foreign spacecraft, four microsatellites, six nanosatellites, made two practice launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
