The Wily Yankees Against the Russian Spacecraft

The cold war between America and Russia is more or less over. The hot war is nowhere on the horizon. But the relationship between the two giants is not what could be called friendship, let alone, love.

The all-inclusive, all-covering, deeply-ingrained sense of suspicion and animosity permeates not only contacts between President Obama and Prime Minister Putin, between American Congress and Russian Duma, or between the highest-level diplomats, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Lavrov; this profound sense of enmity is evident to anyone who reads Russian newspapers, watches Russian television, or listens to Russian radio.

Which brings us to the so called Phobos-Grunt affair.

Wikipedia says: “Phobos-Grunt was an attempted Russian mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. It was launched on 9 November 2011, but subsequent rocket burns, intended to set the craft on a course for Mars failed, leaving it stranded in low Earth orbit. The Russian news agency Ria Novosti reported on 24 November 2011 that the mission had been pronounced a failure because the spacecraft could no longer be sent to Mars, the final opportunity to do so having [been] passed on 21 November. Following concern that it might crash in Argentina, it fell into the Pacific Ocean west of Chile after an uncontrolled re-entry on January 15, 2012.”

Clear, isn’t it?

Well, not exactly, if you read Russian newspapers, which are nowadays full with all kinds of weird stories about wily Yankees that had allegedly destroyed the Russian spacecraft, using mysterious radiation, emanating from their radar stations, located either in Alaska or in the Pacific Ocean. For instance, if Russian readers opened first page of the Moscow online paper Komsomol’skaya Pravda of January 17, 2012, they would see the following story:

“Lieutenant General Nikolai Rodionov, who was in the 1980th Commander of the Soviet Anti-Rocket Defense Corps, thinks that the spacecraft was destroyed by the American High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. This is a scientific project for research of polar lights. It maintains a complex of powerful radiation systems, including radars, antennas, and laser locators… Attempts to justify the catastrophe by some foreign interference have become so popular that even Vice Premier Dmitry Rogozin expressed this opinion: ‘This version is not without merit, although I hope it is not.’”

If even Vice Premier of the Russian Federation thinks so, then it’s no wonder that there is in Russia (at least, in the media) a legion of passionate believers in the crafty Yankee plots to undermine the scientific achievements of Mother Russia. Komsomol’skaya Pravda alone has published already 10 (ten!) articles, expressing different degrees of the suspicion that somehow Americans had succeeded in destroying the Phobos-Grunt.

And some readers agree wholeheartedly with all the crazy pronouncements featured in those articles. For instance, one commentator wrote:

“… the cosmic station Phobos-Grunt could have plausibly disappeared as a result of an action of American radars, just like our Kursk submarine had been destroyed by direct hits of three American torpedoes. Nothing surprising there, folks.” (dongregory; 01.17.2012).

But the really gratifying fact in this multitude of commentaries is the vast majority of observations rejecting the idiotic notion of Americans deliberately destroying a peaceful scientific mission. Here are some of those sensible comments that appeared in Komsomol’skaya Pravda:

“… some people in our government have been thinking lately that the main culprit of all our problems is the United States… It’s just delusion.” (ivan; 01.17.2012).

“We had lost not only the Phobos-Grunt in the last year… What about the loss of the Progress truck, the Geo-IK-2 geodesic satellite, the Express AM-4 and Meridian communication satellites? Have they also been hit by American radar?” (Andrei; 01.18.2012).

But the most thoughtful and sober commentary on this sad subject is, in my opinion, this:

“The Phobos-Grunt has been destroyed by those who had decided that Russia doesn’t need scientists and engineers, but does need instead managers, salesmen, lawyers, and accountants…” (Gost’; 01.17.2012).


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