NASA has rescinded an invitation to the chief of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, to visit its Houston facilities and speak at Rice University after members of Congress noted that Rogozin is currently prohibited from traveling to the U. S. under sanctions imposed over the situation in Ukraine, CNN reported.
NASA has rescinded an invitation to the chief of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, to visit its Houston facilities and speak at Rice University after members of Congress noted that Rogozin is currently prohibited from traveling to the U. S. under sanctions imposed over the situation in Ukraine, CNN reported .
Rogozin was a deputy prime minister of Russia for the Defense and Space Industry from 2011-2018, and a hardline nationalist figurehead of the Russian far-right, before he assumed his role at Roscosmos in 2018. He was also one of several prominent Russian politicians slapped with visa restrictions and asset freezes in mid-2014 amid Russia’s occupation and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Thus the invitation by NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine (which would require a temporary waiver so he could enter the U. S.) raised more than a few eyebrows .
As Politico noted, there was no pressing reason to invite Rogozin to the U. S., and speaking at a “prestigious American university is an honor that the government has not bestowed on other officials it has sanctioned.
