Russia has rubbished reports suggesting its cosmonauts wore yellow suits with blue accents to show solidarity with Ukraine.
The three cosmonauts wore the suits, bearing the colours of the Ukrainian flag, when arriving at the International Space Station (ISS), leading to speculation they were a show of support for the country Russia is attacking.
However, on Saturday, Russia dismissed the idea as fanciful.
The cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev said each crew picked the colours about six months before launch because the suits needed to be individually sewn. He added that they were chosen because all three graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University and so they chose the colours of their prestigious alma mater.
In a statement on the Russian space agency’s Telegram channel, Artemyev said: “There is no need to look for any hidden signs or symbols in our uniform. A colour is simply a colour. It is not in any way connected to Ukraine. Otherwise, we would have to recognise its rights to the yellow sun in the blue sky.
“These days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and our people.”
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the space agency Roscosmos, tweeted a picture of the university’s blue and gold coat of arms.
Иногда желтый цвет означает просто желтый цвет. Если бандеровские выродки думают, что мы из-за них поменяем наши цветовые вкусы, перекрасим стартовый комплекс Восточного в серо-буро-малиновый, герб МГТУ Баумана в оранжевый (нет, оранжевый тоже не подходит),.. pic.twitter.com/7qFDtu11Dl
— РОГОЗИН (@Rogozin) March 19, 2022
Shortly after their arrival at the orbiting station on Friday, Artemyev had a different answer about the flight suits, saying there was a lot of the yellow material in storage and “that’s why we had to wear yellow”.
The Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, has played down hostile comments by Rogozin in the wake of the invasion, after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies.
“That’s just Dmitry Rogozin,” Nelson told Associated Press. “He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us.”
The Russian invasion has resulted in cancelled launches and broken contracts. Many worry Rogozin is putting decades of work at risk, most notably regarding the ISS.
Besides threatening to pull out of the space station and drop it on the US, Europe or elsewhere, Rogozin had the flags of other countries covered on a Soyuz rocket awaiting liftoff with internet satellites.
The launch was called off after the customer, London-based OneWeb, refused Rogozin’s demand that the satellites not be used for military purposes and the British government halt financial backing.
On Thursday, the European Space Agency confirmed that it was indefinitely suspending its ExoMars rover mission with Roscosmos because of the war in Ukraine.
“Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues,” Nelson said. “The professional relationship between astronauts and cosmonauts, it hasn’t missed a beat. This is the cooperation we have going on in the civilian space programme.”
The US and Russia are the prime operators of the space station, which has been occupied for 21 years.
Nasa has said the US astronaut Mark Vande Hei’s plans remained unchanged, despite a video in early March allegedly produced by Roscosmos that showed two Russian cosmonauts waving him goodbye. It then showed a mission control team watching a computer-generated video of the Russian segment of the station detaching and floating away.
The video, which included a Russian song titled Farewell, was shared by the news agency RIA Novosti. Its caption read: “The Roscosmos television studio jokingly demonstrated the possibility of Russia withdrawing from the ISS project – the undocking of the Russian segment of the station, without which the American part of the project cannot exist.”
In a response, the Russian state news agency Tass said: “American astronaut Mark Vande Hei will return to Earth on 30 March onboard the Russian Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, together with Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov … Roscosmos has never given reason to doubt its reliability as a partner.”
Associated Press contributed to this report
