Sergei Krikalev became a representative of the president for cooperation in space
President Vladimir Putin on May 22 appointed Sergey Krikalev as his special representative on international cooperation in the field of space. The famous cosmonaut previously held this position, but in February 2025 he lost it to the ex-head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, who was delegated to the Federation Council from the Arkhangelsk region on May 19. Mr. Krikalev himself considers his return to proof of recognition of his previous successes in this post, the main of which he called the preservation of the cross -flight program between Roscosmos and NASA.
Sergey Krikalev is one of the most famous domestic astronauts, which also has become a kind of living symbol of the change of eras in the astronautics – from Soviet to Russian. He visited orbit six times and back in 1989 received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But the most famous was his second flight, which began on May 18, 1991 on the Soyuz TM-12 ship.
According to the initial plan, Mr. Krikalev was supposed to return from the Mir orbital station in five months, but at first, due to the combination of two flights into one, he took the place of the sidewall in the next crew arriving on October 2, and then remained in orbit for the “third term” along with the crew commander Alexander Volkovov. In December 1991, the USSR collapsed, and due to various difficulties, the crew was able to return to Earth only on March 25, 1992. As a result, Sergey Krikalev spent a record at that time in orbit for 312 days, having won the stars of the Hero of Russia for this.
After that, Mr. Krikalev made four more flights, including two on American shuttle. Subsequently, he worked at the Energia missile and space corporation, headed the Cosmonaut training center, and from 2016 to 2021 he was the executive director of Roscosmos for manned programs.
From the state corporation, the astronaut was fired for “violation of corporate ethics”: he criticized the decision of the then head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin on filming the ISS of the film “Challenge”.
A few days later, Sergei Krikalev was restored as a position, and in January 2024 he was appointed to the freshly founded post of the president’s special representative for international cosmic cooperation. He worked on it for about a year: in February 2025, this position was taken from the post of head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, and Mr. Krikalev returned to the state corporation as deputy general director for manned and automatic complexes. But the stay of Mr. Borisov in the position of the special representative turned out to be even shorter, after which the President of the Russian Federation returned to her Sergey Krikalev.
As Kommersant stated by the astronaut himself, his tasks in the “new-old” position “remained the same” and the work did not stop even during a three-month break. “Despite all the political contradictions, even taking into account the suspension of some programs, on the manned cosmonautics, we remain in close contact with our foreign partners. We continue to work so that the flight of the astronauts is safe, ”said Mr. Krikalev, who was also simultaneously chairman of the Russian representative office of the joint flight safety commission with NASA. In his opinion, one of the main achievements in the field of space cooperation is to preserve the cross -flight program between Russia and the United States, and the astronaut considers his return to the previous position, in fact, confirming the effectiveness of his previous work.
