Russia’s space director said on Saturday that the resumption of normal ties between ISS partners and other joint space projects would only be possible if Western sanctions against Moscow were lifted. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, said in a social media post that the aim of the sanctions was “to kill the Russian economy and plunge our people into despair and hunger to bring our country to its knees.” He added that “they will not succeed, but the intentions are clear.” “That is why I believe that the restoration of normal relations between the partners in the International Space Station (ISS) and other projects is possible only with the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions,” Rogozin said. Rogozin said Roscosmos’s proposals on when to end ISS cooperation with the US, Canadian, EU and Japanese space agencies would soon be reported to the Russian authorities. He had previously said that sanctions could “destroy” US-Russian cooperation in the ISS. The West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia over what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine that began on February 24. Despite the tensions, an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts landed safely in Kazakhstan on Wednesday after leaving the space station with a Russian Soyuz capsule. The European Space Agency announced last month that it had suspended cooperation with Roscosmos for the ExoMars rover mission to search for life spots on the surface of Mars. The British satellite company OneWeb said last month that it had contracted Elon Musk’s SpaceX to send its satellites into orbit after suspending the launch of 36 satellites on March 4 from the Russian Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan due to imposed on it by Moscow.
