Zinchenko's appointment as director general of NSAU is 'a mockery of the rocket and space industry,' says Ukraine's ex-president

11:18

Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has slammed the appointment of Oleksandr Zinchenko, the BYT faction leader in Kyiv City Council, as a head of the National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU).

"Yuriy Alekseev, the director general of the National Space Agency of Ukraine, the former director general of the Yuzhmash [Ukrainian manufacturer of space rockets, and satellites located in Dnipropetrovsk], and a Ukrainian hero was pensioned off the other day at the age of sixty. He was replaced by Oleksandr Zinchenko, a person having little to do with this area. It is an absolute mockery of the rocket and space field! We are not talking about professional management. It is personal devotion and political expediency", Kuchma said in an interview published on Friday in the Dnipropetrovsk local newspaper Nashe Misto.

"With such an approach we could loose our image of a country with fundamental science, high technologies and super-modern production", ex-president added.