Astronaut Scott Kelly on visiting Ukraine, meeting Zelensky, and Putin turning Russian friends ‘bat**** crazy’

Scott Kelly once circled the Earth for 340 days with a Russian cosmonaut, working together on the International Space Station. He entrusted his life with countless Russian engineers by blasting into orbit on their Soyuz rockets, and is fluent in their language after working at Moscow’s Star City training base for several years before retiring in 2016. 

After all these experiences – enjoying the best of Russian teamwork and comradeship – it has been sickening for the former Nasa astronaut to witness the invasion of Ukraine, a murderous result of Vladimir Putin’s stranglehold on the country.

Kelly, 58, wanted to help. He felt emotionally attached to Ukraine’s fight for democracy from the start thanks to a family link: his brother-in-law was born in the country.

Appealing to his millions of social media followers, he raised $500,000 in humanitarian aid by launching an NFT collection. He also helped his Russian language teacher, who is from Ukraine, evacuate her sister and elderly mother from the besieged north-eastern city of Kharkiv and find refuge in Germany.

His efforts were appreciated in Kyiv. Kelly was invited to the city to meet Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, on a fundraising mission in late November, and visited the nearby town of Bucha to speak with survivors of alleged war crimes.

Reflecting on his trip, Kelly is struck by the tyrannical power of Kremlin lies and censorship which drive Moscow’s war. 

“I have a lot of Russian friends,” he tells i, via video link from his home in Colorado. “Most of them work within the space programme, some are cosmonauts. Some are just private citizens in Moscow. I keep track with about five or six of them, and most feel similarly about this war to how I do – that it’s wrong, immoral, horrific – with one addition: they are embarrassed about how their country is behaving. 

“Others are completely brainwashed. I’m not sure they will ever come back to reality. They think: ‘We had no choice but to defend ourselves from the Nazis at Nato.’ Never in a million years would I have thought this was possible from people who were smart and empathetic but now are just batshit crazy. 

“It really shows you the power of disinformation and propaganda, how you can mould somebody’s thinking over time.” 

Kelly’s trip to Kyiv was in support of the 1,000 Generators appeal – providing equipment to power hospitals during blackouts caused by Russian attacks this winter – and a call for donations to buy more ambulances.

These efforts are organised by the official United24 initiative, which has raised more than $250m for various causes, backed by Ukrainian celebrities including the boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk and the former national football captain Andriy Shevchenko. 

When he became a United24 ambassador and was invited to Kyiv, he discussed the security situation with his family. “The big risk would be if you were unfortunately the victim of a cruise missile or drone attack,” he says, “or maybe some kind of terrorist bombing – I imagine there are still Russian sabotage groups around Kyiv.” 

Although the capital continues to be hit by Russian missiles, the retreat of Putin’s army has allowed several world leaders to visit and return safely, including Rishi Sunak. 

As a former US Navy fighter pilot who used to be catapulted off the decks of aircraft carriers in F-14 Tomcats, in the days before his space career, Kelly is used to weighing up danger and decided that raising awareness “was more important than the risk to my own personal safety”. 

“You can see signs that the Russian soldiers were spraying bullets all over the place”

Scott Kelly

When Kelly reached President Zelensky’s headquarters, he was reassured by the level of security on show. “If I were a Russian soldier, I would not try to get into that building. You wouldn’t last long.” 

Going inside and meeting the president in his office was “surreal”, he says. “I’ve met a lot of leaders in my life. He’s one of those guys where it comes very naturally to him – which is great, because he’s in one of the most difficult situations of any president of any country since the Second World War.” 

“I was impressed with how humble he seemed and his ability to compartmentalise, to seemingly give all his attention to the issues we were talking about. He didn’t seem to be distracted by the fact his country is at war, which is a great skill for a leader – to focus on what they need to concentrate on right now, and then move onto the next thing.” 

It was meeting young victims of the war in the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, however, that he found most moving. 

“Putin has decided to terrorise the population into submission”

Scott Kelly

“One young girl was fighting to save her leg. She’s an orphan because the same attack killed her mother,” says Kelly.

“Among other injured kids, you could see the stress and the PTSD from their experiences on their faces. The medical workers live in the hospital so they can work all the time, taking care of these kids.” 

“We’ve got a long winter ahead,” he adds. “Hospitals more than any other places need heat, running water, electricity.”

He also travelled to Bucha, just outside Kyiv. At least 458 civilians are believed to have been killed in the town by Russian soldiers during their failed advance on the capital in March. Paratroopers from the 234th air assault regiment are alleged to have carried out systematic massacres, which could amount to war crimes, according a recent investigation by The New York Times. 

“I saw where the mass graves were, in a field behind a church of all places,” says Kelly. “Some of them they were able to identify pretty quickly with ID, others will take much more time with DNA evidence.” 

The deputy mayor showed him photos of what happened to these people. “Many of them had signs of torture, rape, people in the streets being shot with their hands behind their backs, shot in the back of the head, execution style.” 

“People complain about how much this is costing – imagine how much it would cost if this was a full-scale war in central Europe”

Scott Kelly

It’s thought that up to 300 civilians were also murdered in the neighbouring town of Irpin. Both there and in Bucha, wrecked buildings indicate how violent the attacks were, says Kelly.  

“This is not collateral damage, like you might have if you dropped a bomb and it went off course. This is intentional destruction of people’s homes by tanks coming down the street indiscriminately shooting at apartment buildings, houses, stores. For a country that says they respect culture so much, for them to destroy culture is shocking,” he says. 

“You can see signs that the Russian soldiers were spraying bullets all over the place, shooting out windows and doors where there was no tactical reason to be doing that. They’re so stupid, they expend all their ammunition and then complain they don’t have any ammo left. It seems their military discipline was completely gone.” 

Amongst the looted ruins, the invaders left hints of their families’ impoverishment in distant regions of Russia, far from the wealth of Moscow and St Petersburg, and how recruits from ethnic minorities may feel mistreated by their rulers. “The mayor of Irpin also told how in Russian they would write on the walls things like: ‘How dare you live with this quality of life’.” 

Invasion fallout in space

• Space is one of the few areas of life where Western and Russian authorities are still co-operating. A few months ago, however, it appeared that might come to a dangerous end. 
• Dmitry Rogozin, who was the director general of Russian space agency Roscosmos until July and has fervently supported Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, said that Western sanctions could lead to the International Space Station crashing to Earth because a Russian module keeps it in orbit. 
• This led to a Twitter argument, with Rogozin calling Scott Kelly a “moron” and the former astronaut calling the Russian chief a “child”. Rogozin eventually blocked Kelly.  
• There were fears a US astronaut could be stranded and the following month Rogozin said links with Nasa and the European Space Agency would end. His replacement, Yuri Borisov, said in July that Russia could pull out of the International Space Station programme from 2024.

• Things seem to have calmed down since then. A deal was reached to continue shared operations. In October, Anna Kikina became the first Russian cosmonaut to go into space onboard a US rocket in 20 years, and a crew of seven spent Christmas on the International Space Station: three Americans, three Russians and one Japanese astronaut. 
• Rogozin has not fared well. He was seriously wounded in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, which has been occupied by pro-Russian forces since 2014, when a shell hit the hotel where he was staying in December.    

The frontline is now hundreds of miles away from Kyiv, following the Russian retreat in April. But Kelly believes the continued targeting of civilian infrastructure all around the country indicates how badly things have gone wrong for Russian forces. 

“Putin has realised that he will not defeat the Ukrainian military on the battlefield, so he has changed his tactics and resorted to pure terror like Hitler in the Second World War with the Blitz on the UK… Putin has decided to terrorise the population into submission, which is a war crime. Hopefully, at some point, he will meet justice.”

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Unlike his twin brother, US Senator Mark Kelly – himself a former astronaut – and his sister-in-law, former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Scott Kelly is no politician. But in addition to raising money for United24, Kelly sees it as his role to help Ukraine lobby for continued support around the world. 

With many people in the UK and elsewhere struggling to pay their fuel and energy bills because of the war, he recognises that “it’s human nature for people to get fatigued over time” while they are struggling in their own lives and the war is perhaps beginning to look like a stalemate. 

“The Ukrainian people need our continued help if they’re going to survive as a nation,” he says. “And they’re not only fighting for their country, they’re fighting for freedom and democracy. If they lose, who’s next? People complain about how much this is costing – imagine how much it would cost if this was a full-scale war in central Europe.” 

To donate to United 24’s campaign, visit donorbox.org/1000generators