Russia warns that Biden's sanctions could cause it to drop the International Space Station on the United States

Russian leadership threatened to allow the International Space Station (ISS) to crash into the United States or one of its allies following President Joe Biden’s recently announced sanctions on Russia.

Biden issued sanctions on Russia that target the country’s “aerospace industry, including their space program,” the U.S. Sun reported.

In response to Biden’s sanctions, Dimitry Rogozin, the Director-General of Roscomos, suggested that the United States wants to “destroy our cooperation on the ISS.”

Russian leadership claimed that the United States needs to cooperate with Russia if they want to prevent the ISS from falling on the United States or Europe.

Rogozin said, “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the International Space Station (ISS) from an uncontrolled de-orbit and fall into the United States or … Europe?”

He added, “There is also the possibility of a 500-ton structure falling on India and China.”

NASA has sought to ease tensions with its Russian counterparts.

A spokesperson for the agency said, “NASA continues working with all our international partners, including the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station.”

“The new export control measures will continue to allow US-Russia civil space cooperation,” the spokesperson added, “No changes are planned to the agency’s support for the ongoing in orbit and ground station operations.”

Brandon J. Weichert, a geopolitical and space expert, suggested that Russia has a “decade to 12-year advantage on the U.S. in the galaxies.”

Weichert said that the United States are in “no way fit” to deal with the challenges posed by Russia.

He said, “We are going to get hit very hard soon in space. It is going to be the most debilitating strike on America possibly ever. And, we may not recover from it in a timely fashion. This could be how we lose our first war on Earth is losing the war in space.”

Weichert criticized politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. for not having the foresight to ward off rivals in space exploration after the Cold War.

He said, “They thought there would never be a need for any kind of preventive security measure because we thought we would always be dominant, and we thought no one would be crazy enough to challenge us.”

Weichert added, “Here we are 30 years later, and you have Russia, China, North Korea, and even Iran showing us that it was the wrong assumption.”