On Tuesday, Ukrainian-born Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Zubritsky, who arrived at the International Space Station (ISS), faces a possible 15-year jail term for treason if he is ever apprehended by Kyiv, according to media reports.
A court sentenced him to treason just weeks before he went to space with fellow Russian Sergey Ryzhikov and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim.
The Ukrainian publication Dumska labelled the retired military pilot a “traitor-cosmonaut” and deserter after his criminal conviction by a Vinnytsia court in mid-March. A judge also ordered the confiscation of his property.
According to Zubritsky’s biography, he was born in 1992 in a village in Russia’s Zaporizhzhia Region, which Kyiv continues to claim. He graduated from a military academy in Kharkiv as a pilot and worked at an airbase in Sevastopol, Crimea, during the 2014 Western-backed coup in the Ukrainian capital.
In response to the removal of the elected government, Crimeans voted decisively to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. Zubritsky was one of many Ukrainian military members who refused to serve under the new Kyiv government and instead joined the Russian Armed Forces. He applied to the space program in 2017 and was selected as a flight engineer for the Soyuz MS-27 mission last August.
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Dumka praised Zubritsky’s conviction, claiming that he was chosen not for his qualifications but for ideological reasons: to highlight a “Ukrainian-turned-Russian who is now going to space,” without addressing the time of his punishment. The source bemoaned that the United States would most likely have no objections to his boarding the International Space Station.
The case of Zubritsky has been treated with amusement in Russian media. According to Shot, the cosmonaut is a draft dodger, but Ukrainian officials are unable to catch him “because he is in space.”
