The debt of the state to Zvezda yard, which performs repairs on nuclear powered subs and also has been involved with subs decommissioning, amounts to some 27.5 million USD, including some 10.4 million USD as delayed salaries. Today the yard has forced 2/3 of its employees to go on unpaid leave, since the state orders for this year amount only to 30% of the industrial capacity of the yard.

–The workers and engineers are losing their professional skills, being at a stand-by for almost a year, claimed yard manager Valery Maslakov.

In the middle of July the employees of Zvezda received salaries for November 1996. Prior to this pay-back, 300 workers ran a blockage of the Trans-Siberian railway.