New myth from Poroshenko: Ukraine is a great space power

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has come out with a statement saying his country has achieved big successes in the space. Twenty years ago, on this day, a historic event took place for independent Ukraine – Leonid Kadeniuk made his flight on board the U.S. space shuttle Columbia. Since then, Ukraine has successfully confirmed its position as a space power,” Poroshenko wrote in a Facebook post.

If what Poroshenko says is truth, the Ukrainian-built launch vehicles are putting spacecraft and satellites into near-earth orbit from different countries around the world and Ukraine is an active participant in international space programs.

The Ukrainian president attached a video to his Facebook post saying that 30 Ukrainian satellites for different purposes were launched, besides, 28 Ukrainian-made satellites are currently in the space.

Meantime, experts say Poroshenko’s statements are nothing but a “new historical myth.” Alexander Asafov, a political analyst, says Ukrainian leaders are trying to lay hands on the achievements of other countries.

“Ukraine’s leadership is creating a new historical myth and making a kind of privatization of other countries’ achievements. The Soviet achievements cannot be privatized since they are party of common history, which Ukraine does not want to be part of. In the given case, they have found an astronaut of Ukrainian origin and decided that Ukraine is a space power,” Izvestia newspaper cites Asafov as saying.

As for the Ukrainian launch vehicles that are putting spacecraft and satellites into near-earth orbit, Poroshenko, to put it mildly, “went too far.” Ukraine has an enterprise producing Zenith launch vehicles, however, since 2013, the enterprise has been in deep crisis and cut production dramatically.

Flights to the International Space Station and delivery of astronauts is carried out by Russian Soyuz spacecrafts.