Russian agents are reportedly trying to identify a rogue eBay seller offering a rare Soviet cosmonaut suit from the country’s space race era to wealthy collectors in the United States.
The Kremlin is understood to be furious and has vowed to bring the historic spacesuit back to Russia. The Krechet-94 cosmonaut suit, created for the Soviet Union’s abandoned Moon landing programme, is listed by the vendor Maksuta for £258,000, with free shipping included.
A Russian security source said: ‘It is scandalous that historical artefacts like this space suit are being hawked around the West when they should be here in Russia. Our agents, of course, closely monitor this activity. We are watching.’
The FSB, Russia’s domestic security service often compared to Britain’s MI5, is understood to be monitoring traders suspected of selling pieces of Russian history overseas.
Russian sellers such as Maksuta who offer spacesuits to Western collectors could face fines of up to one million rubles, as well as five years in prison or five years of hard labour if arrested and prosecuted in Russian courts.
In 2020, an alleged team of FSB officers was accused of tracking Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny for years before he was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent.
Georgian citizen and former Chechen fighter Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead in a Berlin park in 2019. German courts later concluded that the killing had been ordered by Russian authorities.
Anti-Putin activist Leonid Razvozzhayev disappeared in Kyiv in 2012, before resurfacing two days later in Moscow, where he claimed he had been abducted and tortured by Russian agents. In 2014, Mr Razvozzhayev was sentenced to four and a half years in a Russian penal colony for stoking unrest.
The Krechet-94 cosmonaut suit, pictured, was developed for the Soviet Union’s cancelled Moon landing programme
The Soviet semi-rigid spacesuit, complete with an integrated life-support system, is being offered by vendor Maksuta for £258,000 with free shipping
Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin during final checks of the Vostok I control systems before launch in 1961
Maksuta has reportedly emailed catalogues of spacesuits to prospective buyers in the US and presents himself as the son of a Russian scientist, though his true identity remains unknown.
Alexander Ivanovich Martynov was a Soviet and Russian spaceflight scientist who worked at Russian mission control from 1968 to 1992. From 1999 he offered VIP tours of space facilities and chances to chat with cosmonauts on the Mir space station. Martynov’s website was set up by Maksim Martynov, a possible son whose first name could be a pseudonym of Maksuta.
Maksuta’s Krechet is one of twenty-two suits produced for the USSR’s moon landing programme at the Zvezda space factory near Moscow.
Designed for the Soviets’ secretive lunar programme in 1967, the Krechet was made for use on the moon’s surface and as a last-ditch survival tool. If a lunar module was damaged and started to leak air, cosmonauts could climb into the Krechet through a hatch on the back of the suit.
The Russians scrapped the programme in 1974 following several rockets exploding and six successful US moon landings. Scientists and engineers were reminded to keep details of the programme classified, and much hardware was either destroyed or moved into top secret archives.
Most vendors of Russian space memorabilia got their hands on the technology during the fall of the USSR in 1991. Out-of-pocket officials sold the contents of state warehouses worldwide and scientists pawned off material they had kept.
Parts of suits were sold at Moscow flea markets in the 1990s after museums and factories were abandoned and local government collapsed.
Konstantin Akinsha, a Ukrainian art historian who studies Russia’s pursuit of items it sees as culturally valuable, said: ‘Under current Russian law, smuggling cultural property valued at more than 100,000 rubles is a criminal offence.’
The launch of vostok 1 rocket carrying Yuri Gagarin, soon to be the first man in space, in 1961 – covered in a soviet film about the space program
The FSB has monitored the sale of historic artefacts to the West since 1993 when Russia passed a law preventing items of cultural value like cosmonaut suits being sold outside of the country. These items have continued to be smuggled out of the country through illicit trade corridors in Eastern Europe.
Robert Pearlman runs collectSPACE, an online forum about the history of space exploration. He often verifies memorabilia for wealthy buyers and has seen American entrepreneurs pay millions to build spacesuit collections.
‘Where you find individuals that have done well for themselves and grew up during the space program, you find people who are buying up space memorabilia,’ he said.
Mr Pearlman has seen millionaires buy spacesuits to display in their office, to donate to local museums and even for their children to bring into school for show-and-tell.
‘They decided to be an astronaut growing up or they have fond memories of watching the missions with their family or they admire the technology that went into [the suit]. And they want to live vicariously through that piece – to be able to touch it, to be able to see it and then to be able to study it as well,’ he added.
Old Russian spacesuits are easier to buy than American models, which are held by a handful of private collectors and Nasa.
