Russia has sent a Ukrainian pilot-traitor into space.

The crew of the 'Soyuz MS-27' spacecraft has arrived at the ISS. Onboard was flight engineer Oleksiy Zubrytskyi, a citizen of Ukraine who was convicted of treason. He is a member of the ISS Expedition 72/73 crew.

Oleksiy Zubrytskyi was born in Zaporizhzhia and graduated from the Kharkiv Air Force University. Until 2014, he served as a pilot of a ground attack aircraft in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, stationed in Sevastopol, in aviation part 204.

After the annexation of Crimea by Russian forces, Oleksiy Zubrytskyi went missing. It turned out that he joined the Russian military and moved to Rostov, and then to the Krasnodar region. After training, he became a cosmonaut.

On April 8, Oleksiy Zubrytskyi flew to the ISS on a 'Soyuz' rocket with crew commander Serhiy Ryzhikov and NASA astronaut Johnny Kim. The rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked with the ISS three hours later after two orbits around Earth.

The crew of Expedition 72 will also include NASA astronauts Nicole Ayrs, Anne McClain, Don Pettit, Japanese astronaut Takuyo Onishi, and three Russian cosmonauts - Kyrylo Peskov, Ivan Wagner, and Oleksiy Ovchinin.

The mission of the crew will last 245 days and includes two spacewalks and over 40 scientific experiments.

Oleksiy Zubrytskyi will monitor the arrival and departure of visiting cargo at the ISS and will service the space station.

He is also a 'special correspondent' for the Russian propaganda publication TASS and has become the sixth Russian cosmonaut to undertake such a mission.

Ukraine has recognized Oleksiy Zubrytskyi as a deserter and sentenced him to 15 years in prison with property confiscation for treason. Oleksiy Zubrytskyi's family remains in Ukraine, in the village of Volodymyrskyi, where his father lives.

Oleksiy Zubrytskyi also participated in military operations in Syria on the side of Russia.

Pilot Pavlo Ivanov was killed while performing a combat task on an F-16 aircraft.

The president has posthumously awarded the fallen F-16 pilot the title of Hero of Ukraine.

The investigation into the F-16 fighter jet crash that occurred in Ukraine is ongoing.