Russia is to build a new spaceport in the country's Far East. Announcing this, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the cosmodrome will be built near the town of Uglegorsk in the Far Eastern Amur region, close to the border with China. He said the government has made a decision to earmark 24.7 billion rubles over the next three years for the start of the full-blown construction of the cosmodrome. The move is meant to ease the dependence on the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan, built during the Soviet-era. It is planned to be mostly used for civilian launches and should be operational by 2015.