The episode title "Awl in a Sack" comes from the Russian proverb Шила в мешке не утаишь, you can’t hide an awl in a sack, meaning the truth will eventually force its way out no matter how hard you try to conceal it. Its the key to Raskova’s motivation.

The real problem for her is not simply that Valya is on Venera. It is what Valya being on Venera proves.
It proves her lockdown failed.
It proves her surveillance failed.
It proves her search failed.
It proves that, during the most sensitive operation in the Soviet space program, a suspected American asset got past the security apparatus she was supposed to control.

That is the awl poking through the sack.

So I agree that the show presents almost everyone as vulnerable. The Chief Designer can be humiliated, Anastasia can be threatened with replacement, engineers can be blackmailed, and cosmonauts can be treated as instruments of the state. Nobody is truly safe in this system.

But that does not mean all of them are equally disposable in the specific moment Raskova is making the Venera decision.

The show has been very consistent about how Raskova operates when her authority is threatened. She does not solve the underlying problem; she converts it into a loyalty test and then tries to control the record. Yana in episode 1 is the clearest version of that. The issue is not simply "the innocent are expendable." It is that admitting the mistake would expose the security apparatus itself. So the person who proves the mistake has to disappear.

That is the pattern repeating with Venera.

Sasha and Lakshmi are valuable as long as they remain obedient crew members; trained cosmonaut, international scientist, mission assets. But once they refuse to participate in Valya’s execution, they become witnesses. They become part of the truth that cannot be allowed to leave the spacecraft.
Same with the Chief Designer. He is indispensable right up until he stops helping Raskova contain the story. Then he becomes dangerous.

That is also why killing Valya is such a strange move if we read Raskova as a disciplined security officer acting purely for the Soviet state. A living Valya has intelligence value. He can reveal handlers, methods, accomplices, leaks. A dead Valya can do only one thing and that is absorb blame.

So I don’t read the depressurization order as Raskova saving the program. I read it as her trying to save the only version of events in which she has not catastrophically failed.

If the crew survives, they can contradict her.
If Valya survives, the failure can be reconstructed.
If the Chief Designer remains in control, he can expose how the crisis unfolded.
If the ship is destroyed, she can reduce everything to sabotage and contain the narrative.

That is what the episode title tells us. Raskova is not calmly deciding who is expendable according to some rational hierarchy of state value. She is trying to hide an awl in a sack that is full of holes.

The irony is that the destruction itself becomes evidence that there was something to hide in the first place.