Phobos-Grunt is stuck alive in orbit, autonomous control is working. It just won't start.
In a nutshell, it's completely controlled by on-board computers. It's not yet known if the malfunction is software-based bug or real hardware fault.
The huge ground transcievers were configured for interplanetary communications and now it's first an issue of reconfiguring them for low orbit link. After data link is established, Russians are going to try to override computer control of several systems and fire up the thing manually. Eg. hack into their own box. There are a lot of unknowns and things aren't looking good, but there's still chance that this mission can be salvaged. Spacecraft will have enough power to maintain orbit for quite some time (well into 2012), but it's only a week until launch window closes. After that, the distance and relative positioning of Mars will be unfavourable. Unfavourable meaning no chance of getting there.
For the less informed, Phobos-Grunt is a 13 ton heavy spacecraft that will (hopefully!) visit Mars' moon Phobos and return samples of it's soil to Earth.
It was built by Lavockhin and operated by Roscosmos, with additional modules from China, Bulgaria, Finland and California's Planetary Society, unrelated to it's mission (eg. each having a task of its own, using Phobos-Grunt as a taxi).
In the shadow of self-proclaimed Phobos mission failure by the general media, Soyuz-TMA has been launched from Baikonur under a fucking snowstorm, to deliver three-man crew to International Space Station. Apart from general turmoil within Rocosmos' head management and launch halt of Soyuz carriers due to recent Progress cargo ship launch failure, Soyuz is operating in routine mode. What really bugs me is we, the human kind, seem to have problems with any interplanetary mission that isn't a one-way trip. Meaning a real spacecraft with real engines, not lightweight probes that run on inertia.
The future looks awfully far.
