PremiumNone of the sanctions levied by Washington in response to Russia's military incursions into eastern Ukraine this week was directed at Russia's space program
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Slamming the new sanctions announced by the United States, the Russian space agency Roscosmos has warned that the harsh move has the potential "to destroy cooperation" between the two countries on the International Space Station.
The research platform, about the length of a football field and orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, in currently home to four NASA astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut.
"If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe?" Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin's said in a Twitter post on Thursday, shortly after the sanctions were announced.
"There is also the option of dropping a 500-tonne structure to India or China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Russia, so all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?" he later added.
Rogozin went on to give a piece of “friendly" advice, asking the US not to behave “irresponsibly".
This comes even as NASA has clarified that the longstanding collaboration between the United States and Russia in operating the ISS is on solid footing.
"The new export control measures will continue to allow US-Russia civil space cooperation. No changes are planned to the agency's support for ongoing in orbit and ground station operations. The new export control measures will continue to allow US-Russia civil space cooperation," a NASA spokesperson was quoted as saying by CNN.
None of the sanctions levied by Washington in response to Russia's military incursions into eastern Ukraine this week was directed at Russia's space program.
Some seven weeks after the Biden administration pledged its commitment to keeping ISS operational through 2030, NASA is still in talks with Roscosmos, its Russian counterpart, on a new "crew exchange" deal, news agency Reuters had reported earlier.
One of the NASA astronauts, Mark Vande Hei, flew to the outpost in March 2021 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and is due to return to Earth on 30 March in a Soyuz with cosmonaut peers Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov.
The ISS itself was born in part from a foreign policy initiative to improve US-Russian relations following the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of Cold War rivalry that spurred the original US-Soviet space race.
US sanctions hit Russian banks
The US has added five more Russian banks to the sanctions list, including country's the two largest, both majority-owned by the government, although each faced penalties with differing severity.
Sberbank, which holds about a third of all bank assets in Russia, will be banned from conducting transactions through the US financial system, through what is known as the Correspondent Account or Payable-Through Account Sanctions (CAPTA) List.
But VTB and three other bank were hit with "full blocking sanctions," meaning all US-held assets will be frozen.
On top of previously-announced measures, the top 10 Russian financial institutions representing nearly 80% of Russia's banking sector and assets value are now under US restrictions.
However, transactions involving energy, agriculture or medical goods are exempt from the financial prohibitions.
In addition, major state banks and companies, including Gazprom's oil and natural gas units, were cut off from Western credit markets, joining the debt blockage of the central government announced earlier this week.
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