In a recent Washington Post editorial titled “How to Shut Down Putin’s War Machine,” Andriy Yermak, who is the head of the presidential office of Ukraine, states that Roscosmos should not be considered as a “neutral civilian institution.” He notes that the space agency helps to guide Russian missile strikes, so it is just another part of the military-industrial complex.
Mr. Yermak goes on to state that Roscosmos “…must be sanctioned in full and banned from cooperating with Western scientific and academic institutions.”
So how would this apply to the International Space Station (ISS), which is clearly a scientific endeavor?
Russia has already threatened to leave the ISS many times, so its departure is something that has been contemplated by the US and Russia. But here we are talking about about pushing them off the station. Will they take their components and head home? Is a partial station solely dependent on the whims of Elon Musk better than a fully-functional station with the Russians?
Of course, a hot war with Russia is something else. Recent threats by both Russia and the US regarding nuclear weapons has not been helpful, but little has really changed on the ground since the initial Russian invasion (much to President Putin’s chagrin).
It is not only Ukraine questioning the Russian presence on the station. Retired NASA astronaut Terry Virts, who served as a commander on the ISS, recently said this to Radio Free Europe:
Cooperating with the Russians on the ISS is like going on an Antarctic expedition with Nazis in 1943…It’s just morally reprehensible.
So far both nations have decided that the current arrangement is working, but that may not last forever if the current spat between the former Russian president and the current American president continue. That would be unfortunate with Russia’s program limping along and the US space program looking at drastic cuts.
The last thing we need is an empty space station orbiting the Earth as a memorial to our foolishness here on the ground.
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