Russian cosmonauts board space station in Ukrainian flag colours, spark speculations

Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday wearing Yellow and blue outfits, giving rise to speculations that the troika was expressing their solidarity with Ukraine, CNN reported.

The head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, posted pictures of media coverage speculating the cosmonauts were supporting Ukraine, and said, "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 added that the crew were not representing Ukraine but wearing colours from their alma mater: Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the report said.

"Sometimes the colour yellow is just the colour yellow. The flight suits of the new crew were designed to match the colours of the emblem of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, from where all three cosmonauts graduated. The design of the uniforms was coordinated long before the current events. Seeing the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is just a clinic [in propaganda]," another Roscosmos official wrote in his Telegram channel 'Closed Space'.

When the three cosmonauts arrived at the space station Friday, they spoke to callers on the phone, one of whom asked about the yellow colour, Commander Oleg Artemyev, responded jokingly, "We actually had a lot of yellow material, so we had to use it. So that's why we had to wear yellow."

The three astronauts named, Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov will spend the next six-and-a-half months aboard the space station.

Russia had started a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 in response to calls from the Ukrainian breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics for protection against intensifying attacks by Ukrainian troops.

The Russian Defence Ministry said the special operation was only targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure and the civilian population was not in danger. Moscow has repeatedly said it has no plans to occupy Ukraine and only seeks to "demilitarize" and "denazify" the country.

Western nations have imposed severe sanctions on Russia following the invasion and have raised an outcry over Russian "war crimes" and the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

( With inputs from ANI )