OREANDA-NEWS. The Russian government may abandon plans for serial production of GLONASS-K spacecraft due to restrictions on the import of foreign components and the inability to quickly manufacture Russian analogues of the electronic component base. This follows from the conclusion of the Accounts Chamber on the draft amendments to the federal budget for 2019 and the planning period of 2020–2021, which the Russian mass media familiarized with. The lower house adopted the draft amendments in first reading on June 18.

According to the document, almost 12.9 billion rubles budget expenditures are being reduced under the federal targeted program “Maintenance, development and use of the GLONASS system for 2012–2020”. This is done due to the impossibility of manufacturing serial GLONASS-K spacecraft, as well as the creation of the ground control system for GLONASS satellites "due to restrictions on the supply of electronic components of foreign production and the impossibility of its operational replacement".

The European Union in 2014 banned the export to Russia of dual-use goods, if they are intended for final military use. Deliveries for the space industry were taken out of the sanctions, but only if they are intended for the civilian sector. But GLONASS is a dual-use system, that is, it can be used including for military purposes. In August 2018, the United States decided to finally stop issuing export licenses to Russian state-owned enterprises of dual-use products labeled “National Security” - including avionics, electronic components, microchips, satellite communications systems, etc.

Industry Minister Denis Manturov in August 2018 said that over the past six years, more than 1.5 thousand types of electronic component base have been developed. “For electronics, we will replace inaccessible components with our own; the missing ones will be imported from the countries of Southeast Asia, these markets are open for us”, the minister said.