Russia's PM Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that not only should individual officials be punished for failures in the space industry, but the whole collective or group of officials, Interfax news agency reported.

"I think that the whole collective should be punished, that is if we speak in a professional juridical language, it means property responsibility of a juridical person for inadequate quality of a product," Medvedev said during a meeting with space development officials. 
He reminded them that during the last five years the state increased space expanses fivefold, but there have been at least six failed satellite launches in the past one and a half years, which is "not good at all." 

"Whatever reason there is for these failures, none of the major space powers have had so many failed launches," the PM said. 
Medvedev also said that some 670 bln rubles will be allocated for development in the space sphere.        

"This is a lot of money, we cannot let it be thrown away," the PM said. 

Recently, Russia has had several major failures in space, the largest one took place in November 2011, when the spacecraft "Phobos Grunt" failed to achieve the orbit after its liftoff and several months later fell on the Earth. The 5 bln ruble Phobos–Grunt would have been Russia's first interplanetary mission since 1996. A robotic mission to Mars then also ended in failure after the probe crashed shortly after the launch due to an engine failure.