A great man once said, “If my grandmother had wheels, then she would have been a bike,” and I think about that a lot. If you strap something new onto a person, object or outfit, then it can change it into something else entirely. So, if you plaster a cosmonaut’s space suit with blue and yellow, does that make it a Ukrainian flag? If we believe our Lord and Savior, Gino D’Acampo, then it does. But Russia doesn’t think that’s the case.
The old “is a space suit a flag” debate has been sparked by three Russian cosmonauts who flew to the International Space Station earlier this week. When the crew docked with the ISS on Saturday, they emerged wearing yellow and blue flight suits.
It was a move that many onlookers assumed was a sign of solidarity with the people of Ukraine. People who have been under attack from Russian troops since the country invaded Ukraine on February 24th.
Since Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, the move has been condemned by people and governments around the world. In signs of solidarity with Ukraine, buildings in New York City have been illuminated blue and yellow with the colors of the country’s flag.
Russian embassies around the world have also found these shades projected onto their walls as people show their outrage at the attacks.
But for some reason, Russian officials have sought to quash any rumors that its cosmonauts were also showing solidarity with Ukraine through their outfit choices.
In fact, after cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov entered the ISS using the blue and yellow suits, Roscosmos officials said “yellow is just yellow.”
They added that seeing the “Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”
Well, that’s us told, I guess.
But, if it wasn’t a sign of solidarity in support of Ukraine, why did the cosmonauts wear vibrant yellow space suits with bright blue patches?
Well, according to the Roscosmos officials, those are the colors of the school the three cosmonauts graduated from. In a translated Telegram post shared by Reuters, the agency said: “The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colors of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from.”
So, there you have it. Apparently it’s all just one big coincidence and we don’t need to question it.