The four men had tried to access the assembly and cargo area where the Soviet-era Buran multipurpose spacecraft are located.

The Baikanur Cosmodrome, located in the current territory of Kazakhstan, but under lease from Russia, is known for being the first site from which the then Soviet Union launched its first space missions, including flights by the world’s first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, and the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova.

It has also been a tourist spot for foreigners. In 2022, the then head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, reported the arrest of a British man and a Belarusian woman near launch pad Number 112.

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