[2] Vladimir Popovkin was born on 25 September 1957 in Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union, where his father was serving in the 211st Tank Division.

[3] After the creation of the Russian Space Forces in 2001, the then Major General Popovkin was appointed the first Chief of Staff by President Vladimir Putin.

[3] On 10 March 2004, Lieutenant General Popovkin was appointed commander of the Space Forces, replacing Anatoly Perminov.

[4][5] After retiring from the military, Popovkin served as First Deputy Minister of Defence from June 2010 to April 2011, under Anatoly Serdyukov.

[9] At the same time, responding to the director of the Russian Space Research Institute, the main participant of the mission, Lev Zeleny regarding the proposed repeat mission called Phobos-Grunt-2,[10] he stated that Roscosmos would immediately attempt that if they couldn't reach a deal with the European Space Agency about their ExoMars program.

[19][20] When Popovkin returned to work on 19 March 2012 he gave an interview with Izvestia in which he vehemently denied some of the stories about the reasons for his hospitalisation, which he blamed on sections of the Russian space industry who are threatened by his attempts to counter corruption.

[21] In response GLONASS developer Russian Space Systems (Российские космические системы) published an open letter from Director Ivan Golub calling on Popovkin to resign, in part due to the brawl, although mainly due to the claim made by Popovkin of embezzlement in GLONASS.