Russian Space Program Is Apparently Forbidding Employees From Traveling Abroad, Fearing They’ll Flee

Russia is struggling with a battle closer to home, brain drain, as the invasion of Ukraine continues into yet another bloody day of fighting. That phenomenon occurs when educated people leave a region in large numbers.

Russia has been dealing with brain drain for a long time. With severe economic sanctions and restrictions on free speech imposed on the country, it has been dealing with a massive new spike of people trying to leave.

It should come as no surprise that Dmitiry Rogozin, the head of the country's space program, has banned agency employees from traveling abroad.

The order was spotted by a Moscow-based journalist and a Galina Starovoitova Fellow at the Wilson Center. The alleged picture of the order was posted on Wednesday, just days after the invasion of Ukraine.

State owned companies use the stick directly and prohibit their workers to leave the country. Consider this executive order by Rogozin, the CEO of a state owned Roskosmos aerospace company. He prohibited his employees to go abroad, correctly understanding they might not return pic.twitter.com/Q2TSxDw9wX

— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) March 10, 2022

He said border guards in Russia are told to stop IT and computer engineers from leaving the country.

Eric Berger, an editor at Ars Technica, echoed the sentiment that the employees of Russia's Roscosmos were not allowed to travel abroad.

The move would be in line with what we have seen so far. He's taken to social media to post a stream of pro-Putin and anti-US propaganda since the invasion began. He feuds with NASA figures such as Scott Kelly.

It's no surprise that he tried to keep employees in Russia. It doesn't bode well for the country's future if it works in the short term.

In the long run, brain drain might be the most important problem for Russia, according to an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He said that the brain drain would accelerate as foreign academic institutions break off their relationships with Russian ones.

The Head of the Russian Space Program was just roasted by another NASA Astronaut.

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