The Russians have big ambitions for their space program. They are planning a new space station to replace their share of the International Space Station when it ends its operational life around 2030. They have made an alliance with China to participate in its lunar base project, with a nuclear reactor to power it.

The question arises, then: Is Russia in any position to fulfill these and other ambitious objectives? A recent study from the Foreign Policy Research Institute casts some doubt.

It notes that “multiple factors have made the sustainable development of the Russian space program impossible.” The issues include “sanctions, an embargo on advanced industrial equipment, workforce shortages, limited financial resources spread among too many projects, cancellation of space cooperation with Western partners except operations on the International Space Station and the economic inefficiency of the Russian space industry.”

The article suggests that the current decline in the fortunes of the Russian space program dates back as early as 2014, when Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine, and........

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