Russian Space Agency Chief Threatens to End Cooperation Over Western Sanctions

The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, is again threatening to end service to the International Space Station, saying Russia will stop supplying rocket engines to the United States and may curtail cooperation on the station in retaliation for Western sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. NASA says operations on the orbiting observatory are normal.

In an interview with Russian state television Thursday, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said, considering the situation, “We can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.”

Rogozin said Russia has delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since the 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles. The Washington Post said the engines are also used by United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to launch national security missions for the Pentagon.

Russia said it would cut off the supply of the RD-181 engines used in Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which is used to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.

Projects with Germans scrapped

Rogozin tweeted Thursday that Russian cosmonauts would not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS. Roscosmos will conduct them independently. He went on to say the “Russian space program will be adjusted against the backdrop of sanctions; the priority will be the creation of satellites in the interests of defense.”

Earlier in the week, in another interview with state television, Rogozin noted Russia is responsible for space station navigation, as well as fuel deliveries to the orbiting lab. He said Roscosmos “will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and, if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station.”

Russia had announced earlier that it was suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana in response to Western sanctions.

Cooperation in space has traditionally avoided politics, and when asked about the situation Tuesday during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “Despite the challenges here on Earth, and they are substantial …. NASA continues the working relationship with all our international partners to ensure their safety and the ongoing safe operations of the ISS.”

Some information for this report came from Reuters.

Quad Ministers Pledge Cooperation On 'Coercion,' Climate, COVID

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — 

The United States, Australia, Japan and India on Friday pledged to deepen cooperation to ensure the Indo-Pacific region was free from “coercion,” a thinly veiled swipe at China’s growing economic and military expansion, as their top diplomats convened to also tackle climate change, COVID and other threats.

Foreign ministers of the so-called Quad, the informal grouping of the four countries, vowed to work on humanitarian relief, terrorism, cyber and maritime security and global supply chain challenges.

Despite being outside the group’s scope, an escalating crisis between the West and Russia over Ukraine was also a top agenda item, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken casting Moscow’s build-up as a challenge to the international rules-based order, which he said Quad would work to preserve.

“That includes championing the rights of all countries to choose their own path, free from coercion, and the right to have their sovereignty and territorial integrity respected. Whether that’s here in the Indo-Pacific, in Europe, or anywhere else in the world,” he said in his opening remarks of the meeting.

Blinken arrived in Australia this week as Washington grapples with a dangerous standoff with Moscow, which has massed some 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border and stoked Western fears of an invasion.

Russia denies it has such plans.

The Biden administration wants to show the world its long-term strategic focus remains in the Asia-Pacific and that a major foreign policy crisis in one part of the world does not distract it from key priorities.

Asked by reporters Friday if confrontation with China in the Indo-Pacific was inevitable, Blinken replied “nothing is inevitable.”

“Having said that, I think we share concerns that in recent years China has been acting more aggressively at home and more aggressively in the region,” he said.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the Quad’s cooperation on the region’s COVID response was “most critical,” with cyber and maritime security, infrastructure, climate action and disaster relief — especially after the recent Tonga volcanic eruption — also in focus.

New pledges are unlikely to be announced before a May summit of Quad leaders in Japan that President Joe Biden plans to attend.

Payne also said Ukraine, China and North Korea would also be discussed.

“More than one authoritarian regime is presenting itself in the current world climate as a challenge. DPRK (North Korea), China as well and they will be part of our discussions today. We strongly support U.S. leadership on these challenges,” she said before a bilateral meeting with Blinken.

Britain said the “most dangerous moment” in the West’s standoff with Moscow appeared imminent, as Russia held military exercises in Belarus and the Black Sea following the buildup of its forces near Ukraine.

The Quad nations have begun holding annual naval exercises across the Indo-Pacific to demonstrate interoperability, and the United States itself conducts freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea.

China has previously denounced the Quad as a Cold War construct and a clique “targeting other countries.”

Blinken’s trip comes after China and Russia declared last week a “no limits” strategic partnership, their most detailed and assertive statement to work together — and against the United States — to build a new international order based on their own interpretations of human rights and democracy.

U.S.-Chinese ties are at their lowest point in decades as the world’s top two economies disagree on issues ranging from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the South China Sea and China’s treatment of ethnic Muslims.

Biden told Asian leaders in October the United States would launch talks on a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. But few details have emerged and his administration has been reluctant to offer the increased market access Asian countries desire, seeing this as threatening American jobs.

Critics say the lack of U.S. economic engagement is a major weakness in Biden’s approach to the region, where China remains to be the top trading partner for many of the Indo-Pacific nations.

US, EU Pledge Closer Energy Cooperation amid Russian Threats

Washington — 

At their first meeting in four years, officials of the U.S.-European Union Energy Council confronted an urgent, short-term priority – bolstering natural gas supplies amid a Russian threat to invade Ukraine – and a longer-term concern: mitigating climate change.

“We’re coordinating with our allies and partners, with the energy sector stakeholders, including on how best to share energy reserves in the event that Russia turns off the spigot or initiates a conflict that disrupts the flow of gas through Ukraine,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken following Monday’s meeting in Washington.

Moscow has threatened to halt the flow of gas to Europe if economic sanctions are imposed as a result of any further Russian aggression against Ukraine.

“This crisis has been pushing trans-Atlantic unity,” according to Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.

“In the medium term, there is the climate neutrality,” explained Borrell, who is also the vice president of the European Commission. “In the short term, it’s security of supplies of gas. Both things go together.”

Europe is likely to rely more on the United States for its gas supplies as a result of the crisis. President Joe Biden has pledged to help Europe find additional liquified natural gas from sources in the United States and other countries if Russia-Ukraine tensions cause disruptions.

“We think we can make up a significant portion of it that would be lost,” Biden said at a White House news conference alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday afternoon.

That is seen by some environmentalists as counter-productive to achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, something the United States and the European Union have pledged to work together to accomplish.

European officials “are not doing everything they need to be to get their addiction to gas ramped down as fast as possible. They’re really convinced that they need gas, and they see the U.S. as a supplier for that,” Aki Kachi, senior policy analyst at NewClimate Institute in Germany, told VOA News. “Generally, in both the EU and the U.S., there’s a lack of understanding about the climate impacts of gas.”

“Germany has decided to phase out the use of oil and gas very soon and by 2045 Germany will have a carbon-neutral economy as one of the strongest economies of the world,” Scholz told reporters at the White House. “It’ll probably be the biggest industrial modernization project in Germany in 100 years.”

The trans-Atlantic partnership has pledged to increase collaboration on reducing emissions from fossil fuels and expanding use of energy from the sun, wind, batteries and hydrogen.

“As we face geopolitical tensions and the challenge of climate change, we need more, not less, trans-Atlantic cooperation,” Kadri Simson, the European Commission’s energy commissioner, said at the meeting’s opening.

European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson speaks during a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell Fontelles, at th

At the start of Monday’s discussion, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the goals set out in Washington and Brussels have significant geo-political ramifications at a time when energy prices have “gone through the roof” on both sides of the Atlantic amid the threats from Russia.

“This is not just an energy and climate issue,” Granholm told the meeting. “It also is potentially the greatest peace plan that ever existed, to be able to build out energy independence from clean energy.”

Together, the economies of the U.S. and the EU represent about 45% of the world’s economic output, and an even smaller percentage of global carbon dioxide emissions. That means for the world to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, the legally binding international treaty on climate change, other major emitters will need to make good on their ambitious pledges.

“If only the EU and the U.S. are taking action, it wouldn’t be enough,” Kachi noted. “But it’s not really the case because China and India and other countries are also major investors in renewables.”