Dmitry Rogozin

Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin (Russian: Дми́трий Оле́гович Рого́зин; born 21 December 1963) is a Russian politician who is Director General of Roscosmos since 2018. Previously he was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia in charge of the defense industry from 2011 to 2018. Prior to that, he was Russia’s ambassador to NATO from 2008 to 2011.

He was also the leader of the Rodina political party, which was created in 2003, until it merged with other parties to form A Just Russia in 2006.

Early life and education

Rogozin was born in Moscow to the family of a Soviet military scientist. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1986, with a degree in journalism, and in 1988, he graduated at the University of Marxism–Leninism under the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU with a degree in economics.

He holds a doctorate in philosophy and another in technology.

Political career

Early career

Rogozin fought in the Transnistria war against the Moldovan forces. He is also a vocal supporter of Transnistria’s independence from Moldova.

In 1993, Rogozin joined the recently created party Congress of Russian Communities led by General Alexander Lebed and, after its founder died in a 2002 helicopter crash, Rogozin became joint leader with Sergey Glazyev of what became the Rodina party, which was described by Novaya Gazeta liberal journalist Anna Politkovskaya as ‘created by the Kremlin’s spin doctors specifically … to draw moderately nationalist voters away from the more extreme National Bolsheviks’. Rogozin was elected to the State Duma as a deputy from Voronezh Oblast in 1997, and he became a vocal activist for protection of rights of ethnic Russians in the former Soviet republics.

Rogozin was re-elected to the State Duma in 1999 and then appointed the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, drawing a lot of media attention and a share of criticism for some of his flamboyant public remarks. In 2002, he was appointed a Special Representative of the Russian President to deal with Kaliningrad problems that arose by the Baltic states joining the European Union. Rogozin received an official letter of gratitude from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In 2003, Rogozin became one of the leaders of the Rodina (Motherland) “national-patriotic” coalition, which won 9.2% of the popular vote or 37 of the 450 seats in the Duma in 2003 parliamentary election, briefly propelling him to the post of the Duma’s vice-speaker, from which he was dismissed a year and a half later as a result of some elaborate interfaction dealings. He remained an ordinary member of the Duma until the following election, in 2007.

After the breakthrough in 2003 elections, Rogozin became involved in power struggle with Rodina’s other co-chairman Glazyev, who had socialist views. Glazyev nominated himself as the party’s candidate in the 2004 presidential election, but Rogozin called on his party comrades to support incumbent Putin. Rogozin soon ousted Glazyev, to become the party’s sole leader.

Under Rogozin, Rodina shifted towards the right wing of Russian politics and became the second largest and one of the country’s most successful parties. A number of controversies on Rogozin’s policies culminated in it being banned in 2005 from standing for election to the Moscow City Duma for using what was considered as chauvinist slogan ‘Let’s Clean the Garbage!’. Many analysts believe it was made illegally to prevent Rogozin becoming a candidate at the Russian presidential elections in 2008.

Rogozin’s right views were not shared by all his party’s members. In early 2006, at Rodina’s congress, Rogozin resigned as party leader. Rogozin left Rodina after its merger with the Russian Party of Life and the Pensioners’ Party into Fair Russia. In November 2006, he was the Chairman of the revived Congress of Russian Communities. In April 2007, he announced that he may support the formation of the Great Russia Party, in conjunction with the Movement Against Illegal Immigration. The party said that it may consider supporting the candidacy of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for the Presidency of Russia in 2008, a move that was unconstitutional because Lukashenko is not a Russian citizen. Because Russian authorities had not registered Great Russia, the party could not contest the legislative election in 2007.

Ambassador to NATO

In 2008, he was appointed a Russian ambassador to NATO. As Russia’s NATO envoy, he was heavily opposed to Ukraine and Georgia becoming members of NATO. After the two countries were denied membership of the NATO Membership Action Plan, he claimed, “They will not invite these bankrupt scandalous regimes to join NATO… more so as important partnerships with Russia are at stake”. For such words, he was criticized by some Ukrainian and Georgian officials. A former Ukrainian envoy to NATO, Ihor Sahach, said, “In my opinion, he is merely used as one of cogs in the informational war waged against Ukraine. Sooner or later, I think, it should be stopped”. The envoy also expressed a surprise with Rogozin’s slang words: “It was for the first time that I heard such a higher official as envoy using this, I don’t even know how to describe it, whether it was a slang or language of criminal circles…. I understand Russian, but, I’m sorry, I don’t know what his words meant”. The Foreign Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Ohryzko stated that he did not regard the statement as serious.

On 18 February 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Rogozin as the Special Representative on anti-missile defense; he negotiated with NATO countries on this issue.

Deputy Prime Minister

On 23 December 2011, Rogozin was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister, in charge of the defense and space industries. For the defense industry, he led the creation of the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects in the Defense Industry.

In 2014, Rogozin was involved in several diplomatic conflicts following the 2014 Crimean crisis. On 17 March 2014, the day after the Crimean status referendum, Rogozin became one of the first seven people who were put under executive sanctions by US President Barack Obama. The sanctions froze his assets in the US and banned him from entering the country. He was also added to the Canadian and to the EU sanction list due to the Crimean crisis. In 2015, Rogozin stated that Russia’s defence sector has “many other ways of traveling the world besides tourist visas” and “tanks don’t need visas”. On 29 April 2014, he tweeted: “After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline”. On 31 May 2020, Elon Musk replied following the successful launch of Crew Dragon Demo-2, that “the trampoline is working”.

On 10 May 2014, Rogozin started a diplomatic conflict between Romania and Russia after Romania barred his plane from entering its airspace. In response, he made two threatening posts on his Twitter account, one of which stated that next time, he would fly on board a Tu-160 bomber.

In 2015, Rogozin was the head of Russia’s Arctic Commission.

On 28 July 2017, he boarded an S7 Airlines commercial flight to Chișinău, where he would meet Moldovan President Igor Dodon, but the Romanian government again denied permission for the plane to enter its airspace, citing the “presence of a sanctioned person on board”. The Boeing 737-800 went on a holding pattern in Hungarian airspace for a while, but after Hungary denied permission for landing and ordered the plane to leave, it was decided to divert to Minsk, Belarus, outside of the EU, reportedly with barely enough fuel to reach there. The plane later flew to Chișinău with the remaining passengers, but without Rogozin. The Deputy Prime-Minister later tweeted: “The Romanian authorities endangered the lives of passengers on an S7 flight, women and children. Fuel was enough to Minsk. Wait for an answer, vermin!” Asked about Rogozin’s threat, Romanian National Defense Minister Adrian Țuțuianu said: “I don’t think we need to make this a discussion, we would be in the wrong attempting to escalate by all sorts of statements the statements made by others. I believe it’s wise to mind our business and see to our program.”

On 2 August 2017, he was declared persona non grata by the Government of Moldova.

Head of Roscosmos

In May 2018, Putin selected Rogozin to be the head of Roscosmos, the Russian state space agency for two decades after the early 1990s and, in the past few years, transformed by Rogozin from a state agency into a state corporation.

Personal life

Rogozin is an active user of Twitter and Facebook.

According to anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, Rogozin earned a salary of 29.5 million rubles ($460,000) in 2018, which is vastly higher than what NASA’s chief earns. Engineers at Roscosmos make about $10,000 a year.

Rogozin owns a 8,600 sq. foot dacha north of Moscow worth about $3 million.