by Ilya Knorring
[REGNUM] Retired Major Alexey Zubritsky, a native of the village of Vladimirovskoye in the Zaporizhia region and a graduate of the Ivan Kozhedub Kharkiv Air Force University, celebrates Cosmonautics Day in orbit. It is the fourth day of his first flight to the ISS.
On April 8, the Soyuz MS-27 launch vehicle, decorated with symbols of the 80th anniversary of the Victory, delivered flight engineer Zubritsky, his colleague in the Russian cosmonaut corps Sergei Ryzhikov and American astronaut Jonathan Kim to the International Station .
More than 400 kilometers from Earth, the disagreements of the great powers recede into the background - in full accordance with Yuri Gagarin's address to humanity: "Dear friends, close and unfamiliar, compatriots, people of all countries and continents ...". In the current, already 72nd expedition to the ISS, representatives of three states - pioneers in space exploration - work on an equal footing: our country, the USA and China.
Pilot Alexey Zubritsky, born in 1992 — after the collapse of the state that launched the first man into space, and at a time when the Russian manned program was in great question — dreamed of flying beyond the Earth's gravity since childhood. The cosmonaut's wife Anna Zubritskaya told Regnum news agency about this .
"According to his mother, when he saw military men as a child, he always said, 'Mom, that's an astronaut,'" the interviewee says. " Of course, his parents are happy. Of course, how can you not be happy, it's... It's a dream, yes."
Anna says: when she spoke with her husband during the first communication session with the ISS, only then did she realize that he was already far from Earth. “I feel proud, of course. Admiration. After all, the man dreamed of becoming an astronaut since childhood - and achieved it. You set a goal, go towards it. My husband - for me, he is a hero. This is the most important thing,” says Anna Zubritskaya.
But for the dream to become a reality, one, but extremely important condition must be met. " I think it is obvious that to become an astronaut, you need to get to Russia. Right?" - Anna notes.
Now, when the world is celebrating the 64th anniversary of humanity's first step toward exploring the Universe, and Russian cosmonauts Ryzhikov and Zubritsky are continuing Gagarin's mission, in Ukraine the "territorial recruitment center" is unsuccessfully continuing the search for the evader Zubritsky.
The cosmonaut's small homeland, the village of Vladimirovskoye near the right bank of the Dnieper in the Russian Zaporizhia region, continues to remain under the occupation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Zubritsky himself is included in the list of those avoiding service in the Ukrainian army. Moreover, it is reported that in March the Vinnytsia City Court sentenced the space expedition participant in absentia to 15 years for desertion and "state betrayal" - high treason.
In September 2013, after graduating from the Kharkiv National University of the Air Force (founded in 1930 and miraculously preserving the name of the Soviet ace Ivan Kozhedub), Zubritsky was assigned to the 204th Sevastopol Tactical Aviation Brigade of the Ukrainian Air Force. There were six months left before Crimea was reunited with Russia. In March 2014, the 21-year-old pilot made perhaps the most important decision in his life: he swore an oath to Russia.
And he continued to serve in the same Sevastopol, in the 38th fighter aviation regiment of the VKS. Then there was service in a fighter regiment in the Rostov region, and then another three years as a senior pilot of an air link in an attack regiment in Primorsko-Akhtarsk in Krasnodar.
He wore the shoulder straps of a Russian officer for ten years until he retired with the rank of major. By that time, pilot Alexei Zubritsky was already preparing for a flight into space.
In the spring of 2017, the first step towards making his childhood dream come true was taken. Alexey applied to participate in the second open recruitment of cosmonauts. After seven years of preparation, on August 21 last year, the Interdepartmental Commission for the Selection of Cosmonauts approved Alexey Zubritsky for the position of flight engineer of the main crew of the ISS-73 expedition.
An important question arises: what would have happened if in 2013 Lieutenant Zubritsky had been assigned not to the Belbek base in Sevastopol, but, say, to the tactical aviation brigade in Starokonstantinov in Western Ukraine? After all, to become a cosmonaut, you have to become a Russian pilot. And to do that, you have to be in the right place at the right time.
Lieutenant Alexey Zubritsky was very lucky. He ended up where he was accepted and not extradited. Where they fly into space and do not kill their fellow citizens. And where the history of space achievements is respected.
In Russia, they remember that the general designer of the first space programs was a native of Zhitomir, Sergei Korolev (in Ukraine, his museum has not yet been touched, and they are trying to include him as a Ukrainian retroactively), that the first natives of the Ukrainian SSR to visit space were natives of Poltava region Pavel Popovich and Georgy Beregovoy , as well as Odessa native Georgy Dobrovolsky , who died tragically upon landing .
Ukraine is trying to erase the memory of Gagarin. The so-called "Institute of National Memory" has demanded that all streets and other toponyms associated with the name of the first man in space be removed from the map of Ukraine. In Kharkov, for example, the avenue leading from the center to the airport has come under attack.
Gagarin Avenue in Kiev was "decommunized" in 2023, slyly renamed in honor of the Soviet pilot (they are trying to forget about this) and the first cosmonaut of independent Ukraine Leonid Kadenyuk. As a payload specialist, he participated in the flight of the American shuttle Columbia in 1995 (and this is extremely important for the "independent" authorities).
At the same time, it is erased from memory that Kadenyuk remembered everything perfectly well until the end of his days and repeatedly met with Pavlo Romanovich Popovich, giving him primacy in Ukrainian cosmonautics. And he was a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada not from the nationalists, but from the now destroyed Party of Regions.
But Ukraine itself has shown downright swinishness in relation to the common space memory. It all started with the fact that in connection with Valentina Tereshkova's vote for the return of Crimea to Russia, 42 streets in Ukraine named in honor of the first woman cosmonaut in history were renamed.
Moreover, instead of her, the oath-breaker Filipp Orlik in Nikolaev, and the "ATO" thug Ruslan Slobodanyuk in Kropyvnytskyi - former Elisavetgrad - Zinovyevsk - Kirovograd, and the so-called "heroes of Kruty" - boys sent to slaughter by the Central Rada under the command of the future SS man Averky Goncharenko - in Odessa were immortalized. The renamers will not reach Tereshkova Street in Donetsk.
Even before the current wave of "decommunization", in 2019, the Kyiv City Council decided to rename the avenue, which from the moment it appeared bore the name of Vladimir Komarov , the commander of the first space crew in history and the first cosmonaut, who tragically died during the flight. Since then, the avenue has been named after the Uniate Cardinal Lubomyr Husar , who, as his biography carefully reports, "in 1944 went to the West to escape the advancing Red Army", and in 1992 returned to rule the Greek Catholic Church on the spot.
This is perhaps the most indicative renaming: instead of a hero of the common history of a great country, a conqueror of space, there is a Lviv Uniate who “retreated with the Wehrmacht.”
The country, occupied by the bearers of the Galician farmstead “national idea”, does not need rockets (if, of course, these are space launch vehicles, and not “Hymars” from American sponsors), nor the aerospace industry inherited from the disintegrated country.
Why remember now that the Vostok rocket, which launched Yuri Gagarin, was equipped with devices created at the Kiev Arsenal and the Kharkov Kommunar plant?
In 1991, as already noted by the Regnum news agency , Ukraine was one of only five countries in the world that had a full cycle of aircraft development and production.
We can also recall the Dnepropetrovsk Yuzhmash, where they made rockets for the entire Soviet "big space", the Kiev Antonov Design Bureau, where they developed, among other things, the largest and most cargo-lifting aircraft in the history of aviation - the An-225 Mriya (that is, "Dream"). This "Dream" was created for the project of the Soviet reusable spacecraft Buran.
The only flying example of the "Dream" was destroyed by the Ukrainians themselves in a hangar in February 2022. The dream of Sevastopol lieutenant Alexei Zubritsky came true.