“He said it was a war crime and he just couldn’t believe that someone could do a thing like that,” Mikhail Korniyenko said, adding that it was the only time they had addressed a political topic during their long stint on board the ISS.
Sergei Volkov agreed, saying that politics was the last thing on the mind of the six people working in orbit.
“There are no borders between us, we move around freely, we talk but we try to stay away from politics. The only exceptions are when something extraordinary happens. A parachuting pilot being shot at was such an exception. We all agreed that it was an absolutely wrong thing to do. We are all military pilots and we know full well what it means,” he said.
“We are like a single organism, like a fist. All six of us working at the station depend on each other. We are friends, a good team, I never tire of talking about it,” Volkov stressed.
Korniyenko and Volkov also described how they spent their spare time on board, how they talked about manned flights to Mars and other things during what they said was a fascinating and action-packed mission.
“This is the first time an ISS crew has spent a whole year working on board the station and much depended on the personal rapport between us… I think we pulled it off just fine because we tried to work as a team of colleagues and good friends,” Sergei Volkov said.
