Ukraine divided; American boards Russian mission to space station

28 Mar 2014

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A Russian rocket blasted off from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 25 March with a Russian-American crew at the height of a stand-off between Russia and the US and its European allies, signalling a thaw in the feud over Ukraine.

Having divided Ukraine between Russia and the European Union, US President Barack Obama on Wednesday averred that there wouldn't be another Cold War despite his speech in Brussels calling for a US-NATO confrontation against Russia.

While Obama sought to elaborate the basis for a major turn in US foreign policy of a new anti-Russia alliance on the lines of the earlier anti-China front, the strategic aim of the policy tweak was to provide a new political axis for the US-dominated NATO military structure, which has lost its relevance, say observers.

The Soyuz booster rocket lifted off successfully from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying a Russian-American crew to the International Space Station, at 3:17 am local time on Wednesday (21:17 GMT Tuesday).

It entered the designated orbit in about 10 minutes after the launch and all onboard systems were working flawlessly, and the crew - NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev - are set to dock the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft at the space station less than six hours after the launch.

The three crew members are scheduled to stay in orbit for the next six months.

So, for the next six months at least, tensions between the US and Russia over Ukraine will be kept at bay.

US space agency the National Aerospace administration (NAA), which retired its space shuttle in 2011, has been depending on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft for ferrying crew and equipment to the orbiting space station.

The US also pays Russia about $71 million to fly each astronaut to the space.

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