Russian cosmonauts boarded the International Space Station dressed in yellow and blue, the color of the Ukrainian flag, but this may not be a show of support as it seems.

• Russian cosmonauts were wearing yellow suits with blue accents when they boarded the International Space Station on Friday.

• Many people online assumed that the suits were meant to show support for Ukraine.

• But it is unclear whether the allowances are intended as a political statement.

Russian cosmonauts who boarded the International Space Station on Friday wore yellow and blue – the color of the Ukrainian flag many use to show support for the nation as it faces a Russian invasion.

Some have assumed that the cosmonauts – Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov – showed solidarity with Ukraine, but it is not clear whether this is the case.

The astronauts lifted off from a facility in Kazakhstan on Friday evening and arrived at the International Space Station three hours later News agency mentioned. They were the first newcomers to the International Space Station since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Many former NASA astronauts, including Scott Kelly And the Terry Virtstweeted about the yellow suits with blue accents, assuming they were meant to show support for Ukraine.

But the astronauts themselves didn’t say anything that suggested the suits were a political statement.

After boarding the space station and making a video call back on Earth, Artemyev was asked about the suits during a broadcast by Roscosmos, Russia’s state space program.

“It was our turn to choose a color. But, in fact, we had accumulated so much yellow that we needed to use it,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “That’s why we had to wear yellow.”

Eric BergerThe spacesuits are picked up and packed months before the mission, but it’s possible that astronauts smuggled them in, Ars Technica’s space reporter said.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, noted that yellow and blue are also the colors used at Bowman University in Moscow, which the three cosmonauts attended.

The cosmonauts will spend six and a half months on the space station, joining two other Russian cosmonauts, four NASA cosmonauts, and one German astronaut with the European Space Agency.

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