It appears that Roscosmos really is recruiting soldiers for the Ukraine War

A new report in the Financial Times appears to confirm that the main Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, is recruiting and training a militia to join the country's war effort against Ukraine.

The "Uran" battalion, which translates to Uranus, is to be made up of employees of Roscosmos, as well as those from its dozens of state-owned subsidiaries in the aerospace business. Recruits will receive a 100,000 ruble ($1,200) sign-up bonus, and a monthly frontline duty salary of 270,000 rubles, according to the report. This is far above the wages paid to most employees of Roscosmos.

Among the recruitment efforts are glossy posters, showing soldiers Photoshopped next to space vehicles, and videos that aggrandize participation in the war. In one of these advertisements, the announcer states, "State corporation Roscosmos calls on you to join the Uran volunteer battalion, where you will be trained for victory in this great war." The report indicates that these recruitment videos are playing in the facilities of some Roscosmos entities, where there are 170,000 employees spread across Russia.

The recruitment campaign is an effort to bolster Russia's military forces, which have been bogged down into a less-than-successful invasion of Ukraine for the last 16 months. The Russian government does not want to conduct a draft of its citizens, which could be disastrous to public morale. Rather, with this effort by Roscosmos and other state corporations, such as Gazprom, the Russian government appears to be attempting to persuade its citizens to join the military rather than compel them.

Comfortable with Krikalev

Roscosmos has not publicly acknowledged the recruitment effort, and this is probably because the space corporation has been largely exempted from sanctions imposed by the West on other Russian industries following the invasion of Ukraine. During the war, Roscosmos has maintained close contact with NASA and the European Space Agency in the operation of the International Space Station.

As part of this cooperation, Americans fly on Russian vehicles, Russians fly on NASA-sponsored vehicles, and engineers at the space agencies work closely together on day-to-day operations. Last Friday, for example, NASA announced that Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov will fly as a mission specialist on SpaceX’s seventh mission to the space station in August.

Despite the acts of war and terrorism by Russia, the Roscosmos-NASA relationship has remained strong over the last year since the belligerent former leader of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, was fired from his post. NASA officials are especially comfortable with Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who oversees crew operations at Roscosmos. In particular, NASA Associate Administrator Robert Cabana, who commanded a Space Shuttle mission that Krikalev flew aboard in 1998, has worked to keep relations warm.

Other former NASA astronauts are less comfortable with the ongoing cooperation. Terry Virts, who flew aboard the shuttle as a pilot in 2010 and later launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2015 and served as commander of the space station, said the orbiting outpost no longer serves as a beacon of peace.

"It is naïve to think that cooperation on the ISS will somehow allow cooler heads in Moscow to prevail or provide some kind of restraint to Putin," he told Ars. "Three cosmonauts that I flew with in space went to the Duma where they all supported Putin’s illegal war, as well as repressive measures that have eliminated the last vestiges of free speech for ordinary Russians."

End the exemption?

Virts and other former NASA astronauts, including Scott Kelly, have been outspoken about Russia's actions in the war. Now, Virts said, the direct intervention of Roscosmos should push NASA to a breaking point in its relations with the International Space Station.

"The Russian government has become a terrorist state, and they are illegally attacking a peaceful, democratic European nation and ally of the United States and EU," he said. "They are killing Ukrainian civilians on a daily basis," he said. "The Russian space agency is now directly supporting the war effort by recruiting a 'Uranus' battalion, and cosmonauts on the ISS have sent greetings and well-wishes to their soldiers. All of these things are markers of a nation and a space agency that we should not be cooperating with in space."

Presently NASA and Russia jointly operate the station. The American segment of the space station provides power to the facility with its large solar arrays, whereas the Russian segment has thrusters that maintain its orbit and provide maneuverability. Virts said NASA should prioritize the development of a propulsion module for the space station, perhaps by working with SpaceX to modify its Dragon spacecraft, allowing the US segment to break free.

So far, the US Congress has allowed NASA to continue operating with Roscosmos. And NASA has, with a single exception, remained silent about Roscosmos' involvement in the war effort. However, one senior space official told Ars that if the involvement by Roscosmos in recruiting soldiers were confirmed by the US government, questions were likely to be asked about why the space station is exempted from sanctions.

"This won't play well on the Hill, nor should it," the official told Ars. "The response from the Europeans may be impactful as well."