ISS Ditches Russian Modules to the Tunes of Ukraine’s National Anthem in Fresh Animation

Since the whole thing started about three weeks ago, Ukraine has been subjected to the devastations only war machines can bring upon a nation, while the rest of the world to the constant flood of more or less veiled threats of wider destruction made by Russian officials.

Some of these threats have nothing to do with the ongoing conflict, but are being made anyway, because it all looks like it’s Russia versus the World now. Like, say, a potential exit from the International Space Station (ISS), which could bring the entire structure crashing down onto our heads.

Time and again since the start of the war, space agency Roscosmos said that it would leave the ISS, and given how it’s the Russians that keep the place at the desired altitude, it will crash and burn. It won’t do that all of a sudden, of course, because that’s not how things fall from orbit, but it might cause the station to be retired sooner than expected.

It may very well happen that if the Russians do pull out, Americans and Europeans could come up with an alternative solution to keep ISS in orbit until 2031. If that happens, the world will be left with a significantly diminished orbital laboratory, but still a functional one.

How the ISS would look like without the Russian modules was the idea driving the creation of the animation below. Put together by a specialist called Hazegrayart, it shows Russia’s side of the station departing, only to be replaced by other spacecraft.

And it all happens to the tunes of a song called “Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy i slava, i volia.” Loosely translated, it means “the glory and freedom of Ukraine are not dead yet,” and it’s Ukraine’s national anthem.