Russian cosmonauts wear Ukrainian colours, space agency says it’s not a statement about the war

A trio of Russian cosmonauts boarded the International Space Station wearing striking outfits. Russia insists they weren’t making a statement.

Sometimes yellow is just yellow. Picture: Supplied.

Russia’s space agency has rejected suggestions that three of its cosmonauts boarded the International Space Station wearing uniforms bearing the colours of Ukraine to protest against the invasion.

Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov docked at the ISS on Friday night, wearing yellow and blue space suits. The Ukrainian flag is yellow and blue.

The choice of attire was taken, by many, as a sign of support for the Ukrainians as they resist Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov just entered the International Space Station wearing blue and yellow space attire. 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/DY8753hYvP

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) March 18, 2022

These colors are just not subtle. pic.twitter.com/CyA12JzTWB

— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) March 18, 2022

3 russian cosmonauts on the international space station showing their solidarity with ukraine
pic.twitter.com/Gtiym5sMcI

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) March 19, 2022

But the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, denied there was any link between the outfits and the war.

“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” it said on Saturday.

“The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colours of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from.

“To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”

Roscosmos Director-General Dmitry Rogozin was more acerbic, saying on his personal Telegram channel that Russian cosmonauts had no sympathy for Ukrainian nationalists.

“Here some bandit cowards and their Anglo-Saxon sponsors don’t know what else to come up with in their information war against Russia,” he said.

Sometimes yellow is just yellow. Picture: Supplied.

Mr Artemyev was asked about the uniforms in a livestreamed phone call after arriving on the space station..

“Every crew picks a colour that looks different. It was our turn to pick a colour,” he said. ”The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That‘s why we had to wear yellow flight suits.”

Officials at the US space agency, NASA, said US and Russian crew members are aware of events on Earth but that their work has not been affected by the war.

Two unnamed NASA astronauts told CNN it was unlikely, though not impossible, that the suits were intended to be a political statement.

“Typically the crew meets with the company that makes the suits months before a flight, and they are allowed two custom suits,” one of them said.

“I think it would be a real challenge to make and launch these suits at the last minute. Not impossible though,” said the other.

Russia launched its invasion in late February.

Members of the Ukrainian community take part in a demonstration against the Russian invasion in Ukraine at the Urraca park in Panama City. Picture: AFP.

It comes as new analysis from the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, says Ukraine has “defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war”.

“That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanised operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government,” experts Frederick Kagan, George Barros and Kateryna Stepanenko wrote.

“That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theatre, but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way.

“The doctrinally sound Russian response to this situation would be to end this campaign, accept a possibly lengthy operational pause, develop the plan for a new campaign, build up resources for that new campaign, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready. The Russian military has not yet adopted this approach.

“It is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail.”

Even the fall of Mariupol, a key focus of Russian forces in the south at the moment, would be “unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power” to have a large influence on the outcome of the initial campaign.