Three Russian cosmonauts have arrived at the International Space Station wearing yellow flight suits with blue accents, colours that match the Ukrainian flag.
The men were the first new arrivals on the space station since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine last month.
Cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov, of Russian space corporation Roscosmos, blasted off successfully from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan in their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft on Friday at 8.55pm local time. They smoothly docked at the station just over three hours later, joining two Russians, four Americans and a German on the orbiting outpost.
Video of Artemyev taken as the spacecraft prepared to dock with the space station showed him wearing a blue flight suit. It was unclear what, if any, message the yellow uniforms they changed into 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 chose their own.
“It became our turn to pick a colour. But, in fact, we had accumulated a lot of yellow material so we needed to use it,” he said. “So that’s why we had to wear yellow.”
Since the war started, many people have used the Ukrainian flag and its colours to show solidarity with the country.
The war has resulted in cancelled spacecraft launches and broken contracts. The Roscosmos chief, Dmitry Rogozin, has warned that the US would have to use “broomsticks” to fly into space after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies. Many worry, however, that Rogozin is putting decades of a peaceful off-planet partnership at risk, most notably at the space station.
Nasa administrator Bill Nelson played down Rogozin’s comments, saying: “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 on Tuesday 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 30 March.
In April, another three Nasa and one Italian astronaut are set to blast off for the space station.
