According to Russian propaganda on May 15, the aggressor’s Ministry of Defense announced“ permission to astronomers” for the first time since the start of the occupation of Crimea to illegallyuse the Crimean radio telescope RT-70 “for scientific purposes.”
At the same time, the aggressor explicitly admitted that the activities of the RT-70 are “necessary tosupport” the Russian-German space observatory “Spektrum-X-Gamma” (“Spektr-RG”), which was launched into orbit in 2019.
For a long time, our Association has been monitoring the corresponding illegal attraction of the property of the National Space Agency of Ukraine seized in the Crimea and reasonably applied to the relevant space state and research institutions of the civilized countries of the world.
In particular, we pointed to the aggressor’s attempts to use the RT-70 for the specified project forstudying the X-ray emission of stars “Spectrum-X-Gamma”, which is necessary for Russia, first of all, for the development of the corresponding “innovative systems” for navigating missile weapons.
In such conditions, it was not surprising that since 2014 the aggressor had criminally given the RT-70 to its own military structures and no “civilian Russian scientists” were allowed to this facility.
In March 2022, our Association officially and reasonedly appealed to NASA and all European authorized agencies, in particular state and research institutions, such as German Aerospace Center (DLR), demanding to stop any cooperation in the field of space with all Russian structures, in particular, describing the illegal use of the Crimean infrastructure by the occupiers.
Subsequently, the space agencies of the United States, Canada and the European Union refused the head of “Roscosmos”, Rogozin, at his ultimatum demand to lift sanctions from the Russian space industry due to large-scale aggression against Ukraine.
In the future, the German Aerospace Center, to which our Association repeatedly addressed, finally took practical measures to turn off its eROSITA telescope, as one of the two objects of the German-Russian orbital observatory “Spektr-RG”, which is in space.
It is noteworthy that first, on June 3, DLR turned to “Roscosmos” with a proposal to turn off the telescope voluntarily, to which the head of “Roscosmos”, the infamous Dmitry Rogozin, illegally ordered his subordinates to “restore the operation of the German telescope” and “correct the mistake of the Germans.”
Russian propaganda admitted that Germany subsequently forcibly turned off eROSITA, and precisely because of the war in Ukraine, but at the same time, the aggressor claims that “scientists in Russia know how it works.” But neither Rogozin’s instructions nor the “secret knowledge” of Russian specialists turned out to be enough, and the German radio telescope is turned off.
In June 2022, “Roscosmos” announced that the forced unblocking of the telescope by the aggressor,contrary to the position of its owners, would take “a month and a half.”
The current theses of Russian propaganda, “coinciding” with the announced resignation of Rogozin from “Roscosmos”, testify that everything “does not go according to plan” for the occupiers and statements about the alleged “demilitarization” of the RT-70 are simply a bluff in the face of the failure of the Russian strategy to involve European structures and space property of Ukraine, seized in Crimea, into the program of “re-equipment” of the aggressor’s missile potential.
It is noteworthy that Ukrainian journalists have now also raised the issue of involving the German concern “Siemens”, repeatedly mentioned by our Association, into the program of Russian missile weapons and have written relevant requests to the said corporation.
