Three Russian cosmonauts have arrived at the International Space Station wearing flight suits that appeared to match the colours of the Ukrainian flag.
Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev, and Sergey Korsakov blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan yesterday.
The team arrived at the space station three hours later joining two 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.
Since the start of the conflict, people have used the Ukrainian flag and its colours 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 are normally packed onto a spacecraft weeks before take-off.
It was 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. He said every crew chooses their own.
‘It became our turn to pick a colour,’ he said.
‘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.
Dmitry Rogozin, chief of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has also made a number of comments which have led some to worry 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.
However, NASA has downplayed the comments.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said: ‘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.’
NASA astronaut 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 for a touchdown in Kazakhstan on March 30.
In April, another three NASA and one Italian astronaut are set to blast off for the ISS.y
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