The relationship between NASA and Russia got a bit frosty this week after Russian cosmonauts used the International Space Station (ISS) as a staging ground for anti-Ukraine propaganda.
As The GuardianThe Guardian reports, cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev, and Sergey Korsakov are currently onboard the space station and were sent flags for the self-proclaimed republics located in Luhansk and Donetsk. They most likely arrived on the June 3 Russian Progress cargo spacecraft. Luhansk and Donetsk are located in Eastern Ukraine, but both are currently occupied by Russia, which recognizes them as separtist regions (the rest of the world does not).
The cosmonauts then posed with the flags in two photos, which were posted on the official Roscosmos Telegram channel on July 4 with a message that says: "Liberation Day of the Luhansk People’s Republic! We celebrate both on Earth and in space." It went on to congratulate the "head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, on the ‘new Day of the Great Victory’."
As The Verge reports, NASA is far from happy about the ISS being used for politics. Press secretary Jackie McGuinness responded to news of the message by saying:
"NASA strongly rebukes Russia using the International Space Station for political purposes to support its 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."
In March, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson referred to the people working in Russia's civilian space program as professionals, "Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues. The professional relationship between astronauts and cosmonauts, it hasn’t missed a beat," he said at the time.