"The military-industrial complex found itself in an extremely difficult financial situation" after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, police official Sergei Ganzeyev told journalists.

"To survive and preserve their intellectual potential, military-industrial businesses had to rent out their spaces," he said.

Earlier this month, police uncovered more than 100,000 pirated DVDs worth more than 1.5 million dollars (euros) in a building belonging to a Moscow research institute that built radars and satellite command systems, the country's anti-piracy agency said.

In the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, police seized nearly 70,000 video casettes belonging to a company that produced command systems for ballistic missiles, where counterfeiters had set up some 1,400 video cassette recorders to produce the pirated tapes, it said in a statement.

And on Monday, some 30,000 pirated compact discs were found in Korolyov, outside Moscow, in the offices of a company that builds equipment for the country's space industry, it added.

Between 80 and 90 percent of Russia's CDs, DVDs and videos are pirated, the agency's chief Konstantin Zemchenkov told journalists.

Some 80 million of the 95 million videos sold in Russia since the beginning of the year were pirated, said information ministry official Pyotr Poroykov, adding that similar percentages existed for audio cassettes as well.

The anti-piracy agency said that just 450,000 of the two million DVDs sold in Russia since the beginning of the year were produced legally.

"Piracy causes irreparable damage to Russia's image to the international community," Poroykov said, noting that it could effect the country's bid to join the World Trade Organization.

SPACE.WIRE