The founder of “Dauria Aerospace” announced that he was leaving Russian citizenship

Businessman Mikhail Kokorych, the founder of the private space company “Dauria Aerospace” and the former owner of the chain of stores “Technosila”, announced his withdrawal from Russian citizenship. On his LinkedIn page, he published a copy of a certificate from the Russian embassy confirming his relinquishment of citizenship. The document is dated January 12, the country in which it was issued is hidden in the document.

“This week I consciously and officially renounced the citizenship of the Russian Federation, terminated my formal and only connection with the country. As of February 2022, this was a conscious decision caused by my fundamental disagreement with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the policies of the Putin government,” — the entrepreneur wrote in English.

Mikhail Kokorych is a native of the Chita region and has been in business since the 1990s. In 2010, he bought a chain of household appliances and electronics stores “Tehnosila”, but soon sold it. In the early 2010s, he moved to the USA, where he acquired a small technology company in the aerospace industry and renamed it Dauria (that was the name of his first company in Russia). At the same time, he created the Dauria Aerospace company in Russia, which cooperated with Roskosmos for several years, in particular as part of the state order for the production of two satellites. Later they were launched into space. In 2015, Kokorych sold his share in the company.

It was reported that back in 2013, he took the position of adviser to the governor of Transbaikalia on innovation policy. In recent years, however, the businessman worked in the USA and Switzerland, where he created two space startups – Momentus (together with Lev Khasis) and Destinus. In 2021, Kokorych had to leave the post of CEO of Momentus due to his Russian citizenship, as the US legislation prohibited him from accessing the company’s developments, which are dual-purpose technologies for use in the civil and military spheres.

• A number of major Russian businessmen condemned the war, but almost all of them live abroad. Last year, Arkady Volozh, the co-founder of the company “Yandex”, made a big splash with his self-characterization – in a text for potential investors, he called himself “an Israeli technical entrepreneur born in Kazakhstan”, while most of his life and business were connected with Russia. A few days later, Volozh, who had previously been subject to EU sanctions, issued a public condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine – a year and a half after its beginning.