Roscosmos, the Russian state space agency responsible for spaceflight activities, published on its official Telegram channel last Monday photos of three cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station, carrying the tricolor flags of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Photos were taken recently aboard the International Space Station and show cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov posing with smiling flags.
“This is a day that residents of the occupied regions of the Luhansk region have been waiting for for eight years,” said Roscosmos’s message, adding: “We are confident that July 3, 2022 will forever go down in the history of the republic.”
The images and social media posts represent the most blatant use of the International Space Station, operated by the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency, for Russian propaganda purposes since the invasion of Ukraine. Luhansk and Donetsk can be described as two separate “semi-states” located in the eastern part of Ukraine known as the Donbas. Ukraine and Russia have been fighting for the two regions since 2014, as Russia incited separatists on Ukrainian soil. The United Nations does not recognize the two “republics” and Ukraine describes them as “temporarily occupied territories”. Conflicts have escalated since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Last weekend, Russian forces reported that they had taken control of the entire Luhansk region.
NASA, Roscosmos, and other space agencies have been collaborating on the International Space Station since the war began. While some U.S. officials have suggested that NASA should consider cutting ties with Russia in space because of the war in Ukraine, the space agency’s executives have defended the partnership, stating that the station is above geopolitical tensions around the world. Also, NASA wants to continue collaborative work on the station, as it is difficult to separate the US part from the Russian part, and even potentially fatal to the operation of the orbiting laboratory.
In an interview published Monday in the German publication Der Spiegel, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson reiterated this stance. “A U.S. and a Soviet spacecraft met in space in 1975, in the midst of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the United States were mortal enemies and ready to use nuclear weapons at any time,” Nelson said. Then this peaceful cooperation continued. Our space shuttle docked with the Russian space station Mir. Then we decided to build the International Space Station together. Both countries are needed for operations, Russians are needed for propulsion, and Americans are needed for energy. We will continue to have a very professional relationship between cosmonauts and astronauts to keep the station alive.”
But the latest photos released and the escalation of Earthly conflicts seem to be starting to change the minds of many who had the same mindset in the past. Terry Virts, a former NASA astronaut who flew alongside the Russians and commanded the space station in 2015, said: “I am incredibly disappointed to see the cosmonauts and Roscosmos using the International Space Station as a platform to support an illegal and immoral war in which civilians are killed every day. The space station was supposed to be a symbol of peace and cooperation.”
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