What is the easiest way to motivate people to betray their country?
Promising them large enough sums of money is probably the answer, and you might not even have to pay. This is the logic followed by Russia when recruiting ordinary Ukrainian citizens to commit acts of terrorism or sabotage in their own neighborhoods.
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For higher-ranking traitors, like civil servants, Russia makes more serious promises, offering Russian citizenship and employment “in your field.”
Military personnel are promised the same things, as well as promotion and financial compensation. But the value of the “motivational packages” created to tempt defectors reached cosmic heights recently when Russia sent a Ukrainian turncoat into space.
The “lucky” traitor was Alexey Zubritsky, a former military pilot who defected to the Russian side after the annexation of Crimea. A Ukrainian court found Zubritsky guilty of treason in absentia and sentenced him to 15 years in prison, but that has not stopped him from flying on the “Rocket of Victory” together with Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov and American astronaut Johnny Kim.
This formula: Russia + USA + “Ukraine turned into part of Russia” is Putin’s dream. But despite all military and propaganda efforts, Russia has only been able to implement this formula outside the earth’s atmosphere, at a distance of 400 kilometers (249 miles) from our planet and very far from the front line of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
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Zubritsky is with a large group of astronauts from the US and Russia who have gathered on the International Space Station. He would probably prefer to call himself a Russian. He already has a Russian passport and rubles in his wallet and on his bank accounts. But it is important for Russia to emphasize that he is Ukrainian so that his flight into space can acquire extra-special significance – so that it can be used as military propaganda.
Fortunately, Ukraine already saw one of its own fly into space – the Ukrainian astronaut, Leonid Kadenyuk.
He was a team member on the American shuttle Columbia in 1997, when relations between Ukraine and the United States were much friendlier than they are today. During that space flight, at Kadenyuk’s request, the Ukrainian anthem was used as the wake-up signal on the spacecraft. Kadenyuk also unfurled the Ukrainian flag in the capsule during a video link.
The International Space Station is the most distant point of “American-Russian” common interests. During the 27 years of the station’s continuous operation, more than 150 American astronauts and more than fifty Russian astronauts have lived on it. The numbers indicate the importance of the station for the United States.
Until 2015, American astronauts played chess with their Russian colleagues on the ISS and each year celebrated Christmas and Easter together. How they coexist on the station today, no-one will tell you.
We can only guess about the deterioration in Russian-US relations aboard the space station from clues given away by American astronaut Terry Virts during an interview about his time at the station. He recounted how, in January 2015, he and the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyayev, looked down from space on war-torn Donbas and saw the red glow of explosions.
“From up in space, we were watching how people were being killed by the Russian war,” Virts said. “We looked at each other. It was a dark moment, but we didn’t say a word.” Since then, according to Virts, relations between the Russian and US colleagues on the ISS have soured. Samokutyayev himself is now a member of the Russian State Duma and an ardent supporter of the war against Ukraine.
“Living with Russians on the ISS, from where there is literally no escape except to go into outer space, is like partnering with German scientists on an Arctic expedition in 1943,” Virts said. “That’s basically what we’re doing now.”
This year, the Russians on the ISS probably celebrated Easter in their own work zone, and the Americans in theirs.
Russian scientists have announced that they have developed special VR glasses for their cosmonauts, with the help of which, in the near future, Russian cosmonauts will be able to attend church services on Earth virtually. Then they will be able to participate in Easter all-night services directly from space.
Meanwhile, a strange pre-Easter story played out in Lithuania. A minibus with Moldovan license plates, traveling from Russia through Poland to Moldova was detained by customs officials because the vehicle was carrying an undeclared church bell weighing 260 kilograms with an inscription showing that it was cast in honor of the Kyiv Metropolitan Peter Mogila.
The Moldovan citizen who was transporting the church relic admitted that he was taking the bell from Russia to Moldova at the request of the Russian Patriarch Kirill.
The customs officers confiscated the bell. It is still impossible to say for sure whether it was stolen from the occupied territories of Ukraine or whether it has a “purely Russian history.”
In any case, European countries will consider Russia to be a criminal regime for many years to come, regardless of how many cosmonauts Russia has in orbit or the quality of the VR glasses they use for virtual attendance at church services.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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