"The political situation had no influence on the work of the crew and the interaction within the crew in general," Kikina said.
Kikina arrived at the ISS in October 2022 as part of the multinational Crew-5 mission team, which also included NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata.
Kikina became the first Russian cosmonaut to board the US Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of the ISS integrated flights agreement signed by Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA in July 2022. The Crew-5 mission team returned back to Earth in mid-March.
At the moment, Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and Andrey Fedyaev, as well as NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, and Warren Hoburg, and UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi continue working on the ISS.