Since April, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) has included Oleksii Zubrytskyi—a former lieutenant in the Ukrainian army who defected to Russia during the occupation of Crimea and was later convicted of treason in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian news outlet Suspilne.
Oleksii Zubrytskyi (also known as Aleksei Zubritsky) was born in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, and graduated from the Air Force University in Kharkiv. As a lieutenant in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, he served as a flight unit pilot in a military unit stationed in Crimea.
When Russia began its occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula, military command ordered Zubrytskyi to report to another unit on mainland Ukraine. He was supposed to arrive there on May 12, 2014, but never showed up. On March 11, 2025, a court in Vinnytsia sentenced him in absentia to 15 years in prison for treason.
According to the court ruling, between March 22 and May 13, 2014, Zubrytskyi remained in Sevastopol, where “acting deliberately and driven by mercenary motives, he sided with the enemy, thereby committing treason—namely, actions detrimental to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capability, and state, economic, and informational security of Ukraine.”
The court also stated that Zubrytskyi had served in the Russian military for over ten years, including during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2018, he was admitted to the Russian cosmonaut corps. He was sent to the ISS on April 8, 2025. According to investigative journalists, he is the first cosmonaut in history to be convicted of high treason.
The ISS currently hosts a crew of seven. In addition to Zubrytskyi, the crew includes Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, Americans Jonny Kim, Anne McClain, and Nichole Ayers, and Russians Kirill Peskov and Sergey Ryzhikov. Furthermore, since Thursday, a four-member team from the Axiom 4 mission has been aboard the station, including Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski—the second Pole in space and the first to visit the International Space Station. The mission crew is expected to stay for about two weeks, during which they will conduct microgravity experiments and participate in educational activities.