(John Ransom, Headline USA) The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has denied that Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) who arrived in yellow uniforms trimmed in blue, did so in protest to the invasion of Ukraine.
“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’s press service said on its Telegram channel, according to US News.
“The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colours of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from … To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy,” added Roscosmos.
Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station last night in flight suits made in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag, in what appeared to be a daring statement against the war https://t.co/iBEGV12e63
— The Times (@thetimes) March 19, 2022
The mission commander, Oleg Artemyev, said that the space station crew just happened to have a lot of yellow cloth lying about and so decided it needed to be used up, which sounds like a lie that’s meant to be seen-through, an old Soviet-style practice.
“It was our turn to pick a color. The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That’s why we had to wear yellow flight suits,” Artemyev said, according to Radio Free Europe.
Artemyev then added the obligatory Soviet style propaganda, proper for the occasion:
“In these days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and people!” Artemyev added.
This is the second time in a month that ISS has been embroiled in a controversy about the Russia–Ukraine war.
Earlier the Russian space agency had to deny that it intended to leave American astronaut Mark Vande Hei on board the space station in retaliation for President Joe Biden’s opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine when the Russian astronauts returned to earth at the end of the month.
“Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Space Agency and a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, responded to Biden in a series of hostile tweets. On Feb. 26, he posted a video in Russian that threatened to leave [US astronaut Mark] Vande Hei behind in space and detach Russia’s segment of the space station altogether,” said ABC News.
Former space station commander Scott Kelly called the comments “outrageous,” said ABCNews, prompting Roscosmos to reassure the public that the American astronaut would return with his Russian comrades on March 30 via the Russian earth descent vehicle in a statement that was included on a NASA blog.
