President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev speaks during his meeting with Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk on Aug. 26.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has said further escalation of the crisis in Ukraine could hurt Kazakhstan's economy.
Nazarbaev made the comments in a speech to parliament on September 2.
He said sanctions and trade restrictions stemming from the Ukraine crisis would hamper the economic growth of Kazakhstan's partners, which include Russia, and that this would eventually affect Kazakhstan's economy.
Nazarbaev said "mutual sanctions by states that produce a total of 60 percent of global GDP" will lead to "serious adjustments and changes in the existing economic relations and world order."
Russia retaliated to sanctions imposed by the European Union by banning many EU food imports last month.
Kazakhstan, Russia, and Belarus are partners in a customs union and have agreed to form a Eurasian Economic Union, which is scheduled to start functioning in January 2015.
Reuters: 02. September 2014
Putin orders building hastened at new Russian spaceport
Russia is building a new gateway to space. The Vostochny Cosmodrome (Russian: Космодром Восточный Kosmodrom Vostochny "Eastern Spaceport")
A new Russian spaceport “Vostochniy” (“Eastern”) is being built in far east Russia. Earlier, in Soviet times, the majority of launches were performed from the Soviet spaceport “Baikonur” in Kazakhstan.
Now Kazakhstan is a separate state and it’s said that Russia pays $115 million to Kazakhstan yearly to be able to use the facility. The construction of the new spaceport is expected to reduce these costs and it also brings more workspaces to the Far East of Russia. The construction began in 2011 and the first unmanned flight is expected to be launched from here in 2015.
On September 2nd Putin flew in a helicopter over the sprawling building site in Vostochny at a time when conflict with Ukraine, maker of Zenit and Dnepr rockets, is highlighting the fragility of Russia's dependence on former Soviet republics in defence and space.
Building a new launchpad on its own soil is central to Putin's effort to reform a once-pioneering space industry hobbled by years of budget cuts and a brain drain in the 1990s.
"Our own space infrastructure and modern network of cosmodromes ... will allow Russia to strengthen its standing as a leading space superpower and guarantee the independence of space activities," Putin said at Vostochny, near Russia's border with China.
Taking to task officials, Putin said construction was lagging behind by up to three months and the 6,000 workers currently at the site was half the number it should be.
"In the future, the capacity of the cosmodrome will be expanded ... to be used to realise programmes to explore the Moon, Mars and other space objects," he said.
Russia has already ploughed some 100 billion roubles into construction of the new spaceport, Putin said, to replace the Baikonur site that it has leased from Kazakhstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Another 50 billion roubles is earmarked for the project through 2015, he said, hefty spending for a budget strained by the cost of annexing Ukraine's Crimea region and an economy stuttering under Western sanctions.
Despite Russia's current financial woes, a senior official tasked with overseeing the space industry vowed the country would not back down from investment in space.
"Despite the decrease in budgetary funds and the pressure on Russia from sanctions, this plan is unchangeable," Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters.
In July, Russia launched its first new design of space rocket entirely built within post-Soviet Russia's borders from the northern military cosmodrome of Plesetsk.
A potential commercial rival to Arianespace of France and Californian-based SpaceX, a heavier version of the modular Angara launcher is designed to replace Russia's workhorse Proton rocket, which has suffered an embarrassing litany of failures.
While it is due to be tested at Plesetsk later this year, Russia hopes to launch the new rockets from Vostochny, where proximity to the equator would allow for a 20 percent heavier payload on launch vehicles.
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