After much lobby from Russian industry, the contract for the bus and integration of Yamal-401 was cancelled and awarded to ISS Reshetnev, but Thales was allowed to keep the payload supply.

[6] On 8 December 2012, at 13:13:43 UTC, a Proton-M / Briz-M launches Yamal-402 to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).

[7] The same day, Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center and International Launch Services (ILS) reported an anomaly during the launch in which the Briz-M stage failed 4 minutes before scheduled shut down on its fourth burn.

[8][9] On 10 December 2012, specialists from Thales Alenia Space carried out maneuvers to bring the satellite into its designated orbit after a premature separation from Briz-M.[10][11] On 15 December 2012, Yamal-402 was taken to its planned geostationary orbit at the altitude of 36,000 km following a series of four adjustment operations.

[12] The satellite lost 4 years of fuel to compensate for lower than expected orbit injection.