Baikonur

Baikonur is a city in Kazakhstan built to house the administrative offices and workers of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, with 39,341 residents at the 2020 census. Founded under Soviet rule as the closed city of Leninsk and renamed Baikonur in 1995, it sits within a roughly 90 by 85 kilometer territory that Russia leases from Kazakhstan and administers until 2050 under a bilateral agreement; it remains a closed city requiring Roscosmos permits for foreign visitors, and its fortunes have risen and fallen with Soviet and Russian space launch activity for more than half a century.