Popular British blogger Benjamin Rich was detained on the territory of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, said the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin.

“A report was received from the Yuzhny space center (Baikonur) about the detention in the area of launch pad 112 (the Buran complex owned by Kazakhstanis) of British citizen Rich Benjamin and Belarusian citizen Zelupa Alina. Both are in the Baikonur Department of Internal Affairs. Investigative actions are underway,” Rogozin wrote in Telegram.

He later published photographs of the detainees’ passports.

Benjamin Rich runs the “Bald and bankrupt” YouTube channel with over 3.5 million subscribers.

The blogger is fluent in Russian and mostly travels to non-tourist places in the countries of the former USSR. Most episodes were filmed in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

The day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Rich visited the border of the two countries, and after the outbreak of hostilities, he left Kyiv on a train with refugees.

The last vlog on his channel was released on April 24 and is titled “Syria that is not shown by the media.”

On site 112, where the Briton and his girlfriend were detained, the second flight copy of the Buran space shuttle and its overall layout are stored.

His flight was planned in 1992, but was never carried out due to the closure of the space program.

This is not the first time Burany has attracted the attention of bloggers – earlier, some of them managed to get into an unguarded hangar, which is in a semi-abandoned state.

Last year, street artists painted one of the ships. They stated that they wanted to draw attention to the abandoned historical heritage.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome is located on the territory of the Kyzylorda region of Kazakhstan, Russia leases it until 2050.

Administrative liability is provided for illegal entry into the territory of the complex.