The last Soviet citizen: The cosmonaut who was left behind in space
rbth.com
rbth.com
This article mentions other countries buying seats on Mir. The book explains how this was a deliberate international effort to keep the Russian space program alive with infusions of hard cash. This was to avoid huge numbers of scientists with, effectively, high-level missile experience dispersing across the world in desperate need of money (rockets==missiles; that was the point of the whole original space race).
It's an eye-opening look at an astonishing time, and it culminates in heart-stopping descriptions of the various in-flight accidents, including the mid-space collision with a supply craft that knocked a hole in the station and nearly killed everyone aboard.
If you prefer video, the author gave an extended interview about it when it was released: https://www.c-span.org/video/?115419-1/dragonfly-nasa-crisis...
Imagine some legal quirk in the interpretation of Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty:
"A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body."
where the International Court of Justice required the UN to treat the Soviet Union as still existing, with Krikalev as its only citizen (and thus government).
He could nominate himself as the Soviet representative to the UN, and exercise his country's veto, while also having to pay the country's contribution to the UN budget. Things would be even more complicated if some members of the Soviet armed forces, and ambassadors, accepted him as their rightful leader.
It would effectively be an extreme case of the odd situation regarding the status of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
well in Italy we took the story and made an advertisement out of it
I'm not sure I understand the final joke about America. Did they lose territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union or is it just a joke like "ah, this is so good it might as well be America"?