Fire Disrupts Russian Satellite Center

In the mess of wires inside one of Russia’s military space relay stations, a small cable short-circuited Thursday--and the country lost control of four military satellites.

A blaze at the Russian Space Forces unit in Kurilovo, 120 miles southwest of Moscow, knocked out communication with the satellites for part of the day--a new reminder of the nation’s dangerously decrepit military infrastructure.

The fire was reminiscent of the blaze in August at the Ostankino television tower, Russia’s central relay tower, that caused TV screens nationwide to go blank, also due to an electrical short-circuit.

Space forces personnel, exhibiting the instinctive secrecy of the Russian military, delayed calling firefighters for three hours and tried to handle the blaze alone, but it soon tore through the three-story concrete complex. There were no reported casualties.

“Everything was ablaze,” said Capt. Andrei Kosarenko, duty officer at the unit. “It was so hot you could not even approach the building. It was literally enveloped in flames, and the sight was truly scary.”

Russian military officials played down the problem and said Thursday afternoon that communication with the satellites had been reestablished. There was no detail as to how long the satellites were incommunicado.

Alexander I. Zhilin, military analyst with the weekly Moscow News, said that despite the secrecy and efforts to shrug off the incident, the loss of communication was very serious.

The blaze underscored the looming problem Russia faces in upgrading outdated infrastructure, not only in the military but in almost every sphere.

Russia still runs on Soviet-era technology, and news reports are littered with routine smaller-scale disasters: Roofs and bridges collapse; industrial accidents are rife; and pipelines burst, spilling oil or toxic chemicals.

“It is clear to everybody that Russia is entering a period of technological catastrophes,” Zhilin said. “In the 10 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, there has been very little technical maintenance of the armed forces, even in such important branches as the strategic rocket forces and space forces.”

Eighty percent of Russia’s 100 or so satellites are nearing the end of their usefulness, Interfax reported Thursday.

In January, Emergencies Minister Sergei K. Shoigu predicted a decade of disaster for Russia, saying its aviation, oil and gas pipelines and dams were at risk.

After the Ostankino fire, President Vladimir V. Putin said the blaze showed the poor shape of the country’s vital infrastructure and declared that “only economic development will allow us to avoid such calamities.”

Funding for infrastructure has dropped 80% since the fall of the empire, and Russia’s cash-strapped government has no grand investment plans.

In the past decade, Russia has become a third-rate power saddled with the expenses of a nuclear power. It had to cut its early-warning satellite system for lack of funds. This means Moscow would have no way of determining whether signals indicating that a nuclear attack was underway were real or false, said Geoffrey Forden, a security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1995, Russia misidentified a scientific rocket that was launched by Norway as a U.S. Trident missile, but at that time the country still had early-warning satellites that established that the Americans had not launched a nuclear weapon.