The Western space community should put Dmitry Rogozin on “ignore”

Enlarge / Roscosmos Head Dmitry Rogozin is seen before Russia-China talks at the Moscow Kremlin. (credit: Mikhail Metzel/TASS via Getty Images)

It happened again this weekend. Both Bloomberg and Axios reported that Russia is quitting the International Space Station due to sanctions imposed by the United States on Russia. Each of these stories garnered considerable attention. And each of these stories was also wrong.

This has become a predictable pattern in recent weeks: Dmitry Rogozin, the voluble leader of Russia’s space corporation, will give an interview to a Russian space publication, and then Western news outlets will pick up whatever Rogozin says and leap to conclusions that are simply incorrect.

Specifically, this is what Rogozin said on state television this weekend: “The decision has been taken already, we’re not obliged to talk about it publicly. I can say this only—in accordance with our obligations, we’ll inform our partners about the end of our work on the ISS with a year’s notice.”