Yuri Borisov, the newly appointed head of the space agency Roscosmos, said during a meeting with Vladimir Putin that Russia will fulfill its obligations to its partners on the ISS before abandoning the project
Russia will leave the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 and will build its own, the country’s space chief said, in a move that will end two decades of symbolic cooperation between Moscow and the West, the Guardian newspaper reports.
THE Yuri Borisovthe newly appointed head of the space agency Roscosmos, said during a meeting with Vladimir Putin that Russia will fulfill its obligations to its partners on the ISS before abandoning the project.
“The decision to abandon the station after 2024 has been madeBorisov said, to which Putin replied: “Fine.”
Borisov’s statement confirmed earlier statements by the previous head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, about Moscow’s intention to abandon the station after 2024. Rogozin had threatened to end cooperation unless the US, E.U. and Canada lift their sanctions against companies involved in the Russian space industry.
The first version of the ISS it was launched in 1998 and astronauts from a number of Western countries and Russia have lived there continuously since 2000, the longest continuous human presence in low Earth orbit in history. The station was widely seen as a symbol of the post-Cold War partnership between the two space superpowers, Russia and the US. Speaking in 2001 alongside then-US President George W. Bush, Putin praised the ISS as an example of the “very successful” bilateral relations between the two countries.
A senior NASA official told Reuters on Tuesday (July 26) that Russia has not communicated its intention to leave the ISS. Despite widespread condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, space had remained one of the last avenues of cooperation between Moscow and the West.
Borisov’s latest announcement to leave the ISS will come as no surprise given Moscow’s growing isolation. Russia’s space agency sparked controversy this month when it released images of its cosmonauts on the ISS celebrating Moscow’s capture of the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk.
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