Russian cosmonauts arrive wearing Ukrainian flag

Three Russian cosmonauts who arrived at the International Space Station on Friday 18^th after blasting off from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan, arrived wearing flight suits that appeared to match the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

The three, Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev, and Sergey Korsakov, arrived at the space station three hours later where they joined two other Russians, four Americans, and a German on the orbiting outpost.

The trio were the first new arrivals on the space station since the start of the war in Ukraine last month, which ahs seen people around the world wearing the colours of the Ukrainian flag to show solidarity with the country.

Video of Artemyev taken as the spacecraft prepared to dock with the ISS showed him wearing a blue flight suit, the standard-issue uniform colour, but by the time the trio emerged from their Soyuz MS-21 capsule and onto the space station, they were all wearing bright yellow uniforms with blue stripes.

Cosmonauts change into their flight suits en route once they no longer need to be wearing their pressure suits. The jumpsuits, which are normally packed onto a spacecraft weeks before take-off, were not the normal suits and it is unclear what, if any, message the yellow uniforms were intended to send.

When the cosmonauts were able to talk to family back on Earth, Artemyev was asked about the suits to which he responded every crew chooses their own and “It became our turn to pick a colour.

“But in fact, we had accumulated a lot of yellow material so we needed to use it. So that’s why we had to wear yellow.”

The Russian war has resulted in cancelled spacecraft launches and broken contracts, with Dmitry Rogozin, Chief of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, making comments that have worried some that decades of a peaceful space partnership could be at risk.

Among his comments has been the suggestion that the US would have to use ‘broomsticks’ to fly into space after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies.

NASA has downplayed the comments with Administrator Bill Nelson saying: ‘That’s just Dmitry Rogozin. He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us.

‘The other people that work in the Russian civilian space program, they’re professional.

‘They don’t miss a beat with us, American astronauts and American mission control.

“Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues.”

Mark Vande Hei, who this week broke the US single spaceflight record of 340 days, is due to leave the space station with two Russians aboard a Soyuz capsule that will touchdown in Kazakhstan on March 30.

In April, three NASA and one Italian astronaut are set to blast off for the ISS station but no Russian cosmonauts are expected to be on the flight, but hopefully by the time they arrive the Ukrainian flag will once again be flying proudly over the independent country.

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