Companies don't conclude contracts with Roscosmos over U.S. sanctions – media

First Deputy Director General for Economy and Finance with Russia's State Space Corporation Roscosmos Maxim Ovchinnikov says one of the corporation's counterparties in 2020 decided not to conclude a contract for the launch of a satellite over U.S. sanctions slapped on the Russian Federation.

"The issue is related to international politics, namely the sanctions. In some cases, they simply lead to the fact that, despite more competitive proposals by the Russian side, a customer declines contracts. Unfortunately, we had such an example last year. We offered a lower [bid], but the counterparty refused, as there are restrictions under which vehicles with American components mustn't fly on our launch vehicles," he told the Russian news agency Interfax on April 12.

Roscosmos hopes to conclude a contract with Britain's OneWeb for the launch of second-generation satellites.

Read alsoAir supply issues on ISS: Russian Orbital Segment reports failure"They'll have second-generation vehicles that we'd like to launch on our launch vehicles, including promising ones. Negotiations are underway, it's too early to talk about an outcome, but we'll do utmost to get this contract," Ovchinnikov said.

The news agency mentions that in February, Russia's Rocket & Space Corp. Energia reported that sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union could lead to "the restriction of international cooperation in the implementation of a number of projects."

Earlier, many Russian space enterprises, among them were Samara-based Progress Space Rocket Centre and the Central Scientific Research Institute for Machine Building (JSC TsNIIMash), were put on the U.S. sanctions lists.

Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin considers the sanctions against Progress and TsNIIMash unlawful.

Russia, despite the restrictive measures from Washington, supplies the United States with RD-180 rocket engines for the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas-V missiles, while RD-181 engines are delivered to another American company, Orbital ATK. They are used in Antares rockets to send Cygnus cargo ships to International Space Station (ISS), the news agency said.