American Astronaut to Take Russian Ride despite Ukraine Crisis

A Russian spacecraft has agreed to give a ride to an American astronaut to earth amid US-Russia tensions over Ukraine.

According to BBC and several other international news services American astronaut Mark Vande Hei - who has been in space for 355 days - might be left behind on the ISS due to heightened tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

But it has been confirmed he will travel aboard a Russian capsule to Kazakhstan.

The American and two Russian cosmonauts will be brought back to Earth.

"I can tell you for sure Mark is coming home... We are in communication with our Russian colleagues. There's no fuzz on that," Joel Montalbano, Nasa's International Space Station (ISS) programme manager said.

He admitted the astronauts were "aware of what's going on" in the world, but they still work as a team.

Under international space law, astronauts from all nations must "provide all possible help" to other astronauts when needed, "including emergency landing in a foreign country or at sea", he said.

Dmitry Rogozin, chief of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, had previously warned about sanctions causing technical issues to the ISS but Montalbano said it had continued to run smoothly.

"All these activities have continued for 20 years and nothing has changed in the last three weeks. Our control centres operate successfully, flawlessly, seamlessly," he said.

This was the second such event when political issues on earth caused uncertainties in returning astronaut from outer space since 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed delaying the return of a Soviet astronaut.

Krikalev, often also called "the last Soviet citizen", was stuck in space when the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991.

 With the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the landing area both being located in the newly independent Kazakhstan, there was a great deal of uncertainty about the fate of his mission. He however returned to Earth on March 25 next.