Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian state-owned space corporation Roscosmos, has reported detaining British national Benjamin Rich along with his Belarusian companion Alina Tseliupa at Baikonur, a cosmodrome Roscosmos leases from Kazakhstan. They were found near the launch pad of the Buran space shuttle and taken to the police department. Following the incident, Rogozin published the photos of their passports.
Benjamin Rich is a British YouTube blogger known for his channel Bald and Bankrupt, which has 3.5 million subscribers. Many of his videos are dedicated to travel in Eastern Europe.
Late in February 2002, he set out on a tour around Ukraine’s regions adjacent to the Russian border. In May 2020, Belarusian The Village wrote that Rich was in a relationship with a girl from Belarus called Alina, who had made an appearance in a few of his videos.