Russia’s space agency hits back at US
In a tit-for-tat move against restrictions slapped on it by the international community due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, Russia’s space agency announced on Thursday that it would be imposing counter-sanctions.
According to the agency’s director, Dmitry Rogozin, Roscosmos will halt shipping RD-181 rocket engines to the US and maintaining the 24 engines that are currently owned by the country.
“In this situation, we can no longer provide the US with the best rocket engines in the world. Let them fly on something else – their brooms,” he stated live on Russian television.
Rogozin also announced that he had written to Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, the head of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), announcing that Russia would cease conducting joint scientific experiments on the International Space Station.
What he described as the hostile and destructive actions of the DLR had curtailed crucial joint space projects, Rogozin said. He pointed to the shutdown of the German eROSITA wide-field telescope aboard the Russian observatory, which had led to the collapse of a unique scientific project to create a map of the entire sky in the Röntgen (X-ray) spectrum.
“German colleagues who took such steps to politicize our relations will end up with nothing,” he opined.
Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine last week, claiming it was forced to do so to stop Kiev’s armed forces from attacking the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, and in order to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country.
The West has almost universally condemned Russia for what it called its unprovoked aggression. The sanctions that have since been imposed on Moscow in retaliation target a lengthy list of Russian authorities and are intended to seriously impact the Russian economy. The UN has adopted a resolution condemning Russian actions in Ukraine and demanding Russia immediately withdraw its troops.
