NASA has officially decried Russia for spreading anti-Ukraine propaganda on board the ISS earlier this week.
On Monday, the Russian space agency took to Telegram to post images of ISS cosmonauts holding the flags of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic — two separatist regions in Eastern Ukraine that only Russia and Syria recognize as independent territories — claiming that the Russian capture of the territories was a “liberation day to celebrate both on Earth and in space.”
While NASA administrator Bill Nelson was quick to respond, claiming that there was no need for the US to further escalate the situation, the agency has seemingly had a change of heart since then.
NASA decided to condemn the act in a fiery Thursday statement, declaring that it “strongly rebukes using the International Space Station for political purposes to support [the] war against Ukraine, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the station’s primary function among the 15 international participating countries to advance science and develop technology for peaceful purposes.”
End of an Era?
Until this week, the off-world relationship between the two countries had remained civil overall, in spite of the war currently waging on Ukrainian soil.
Earlier this year, NASA associate administrator for space operation Kathy Leuders said that the space agencies and their respective spacefarers were “still working together,” as quoted by The Washington Post. “Obviously, we understand the global situation and where it is, but as a joint team, these teams are operating together.”
The astronauts and cosmonauts themselves have gone to great lengths to debunk claims of any Ukraine-related ill will amongst one another.
“About my relationship with my Russian crewmates,” NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, told the press back in April after returning to Earth by way of Russian spacecraft. “They were, are and will continue to be very dear friends of mine.”
Honestly, this whole situation is pretty heartbreaking. The ISS has served as a powerful symbol of peace and cooperation for decades. Politicizing the orbital outpost during a divisive, violent war serves as a highly unfortunate departure from its intended purposes.
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Its not a war against Ukraine, it started as a liberation movement to free the Donbas from slaughter by the Azov Nazi brigade of Zelensky who, under CIA guidance, had been shelling the area from 2014, after the CIA led coup. Putin was specific about it & so far he’s the only one speaking the truth in a sea of Zelensky/CIA/NATO lies & fabrications. Truth matters, unless you are a globalist.
Yeah and lets not forget the Crimea and how wonderful Mr. Putin gobbled it up to capture mineral resources and access. Mr. Putin is such as saint. And lets not forget that the Donbas region is loaded with Russians who where supplied weapons to promote an uprising by that wonderful Mr. Putin. He is such as saint, unfortunately a dark saint.
According to Russia, over 90% of the people in the Crimean Peninsula wanted to join Russia. According to the Ukraine, only about 60% of the people wanted to join Russia. Since neither the U.N. nor NATO bothered to go ask these people what they wanted, we really don’t know who the villain was in that story. Was Russia an invader, or a rescuer?
Why doesn’t the U.N. send people into these contested areas of the Ukraine and ask them what they want? Russia says most of the people in these areas want to leave the Ukraine, which has the worst GDP in Europe, while the Ukraine says that is not so. If we only had some mystical way of finding out just what it is the people living there actually want, and react accordingly, we could save a lot of lives. Wait, we do have this mystical way, it’s called communication. It’s a concept that is foreign to some political peoples and entities, but it works in most situations when properly used.