Head of Russian space agency appears to threaten to drop ISS on India or China

CTV QP: Trump has 'blood on his hands' in Ukraine Retired U.S. Army lieutenant Col. Alexander Vindman thinks Trump has ‘blood on his hands’ over what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

The head of Russia's space agency appears to have threatened to drop the International Space Station on India or China because of Western sanctions.

Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of Roscosmos, tweeted that countries should "prevent your sanctions from falling on your head, and not only in a figurative sense," in a series of posts Thursday. He was responding to news that U.S. sanctions, imposed in retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, could affect the Russian space program.

"Do you want to destroy our co-operation on the ISS?" Rogozin, who is also Russia's former ambassador to NATO, wrote in a tweet.

He also noted the work that Russian cosmonauts do to navigate the space station and avoid hitting space junk, though according to NASA, U.S. systems also have extensive software to be able to determine and control the ISS's orientation.

"If you block co-operation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe?" he wrote. "There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure to India and China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect?"

Earlier this week, Rogozin said in a statement posted to the Roscosmos Twitter account that "the State Corporation values professional relations with NASA."

"Operations on the ISS have not yet been affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine or by the international community's response, according to Scott Pace, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

"That would be something that would be an utterly last resort, so I don't really see that happening unless there is a wider military confrontation," Pace told The Associated Press.

The ISS was first launched in 1998 as an international partnership of five countries, including Canada, the U.S. and Russia. The station's first crew -- made up of a team of one American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts -- reportedly got along well, and once opened the doors of the station and held hands in unity, though the mission control centres in the two respective countries occasionally butted heads with different marching orders for the scientists.

Four NASA astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut are currently on the space station.

With files from The Associated Press.