Yes, most (all?) land belongs to countries. You're being weirdly pedantic. But then, once it's annexed, it's just part of the USSR. Remember how we don't say "the Ukraine" anymore? The reason why we _used_ to say that is because it _used_ to be accurate because there wasn't a country, it was a region of the USSR.
> you can’t claim with a straight face that Russia brought with it the technology or culture
That's not really the claim I'm making. The claim I'm making is that the USSR space program being called a "Russian" space program isn't really egregious (and, I think, colloquially true). The technology that space program developed is appropriately called Russian, even if each individual working on it isn't Russian, even if every component wasn't made by Russia. The program is a Russian effort and the result was a Russian rocket.
> the brains part came from Ukraine, not Russia
NASA doesn't only employ natural born Americans. The guy who developed the Russian guidance system was Ukrainian. It's still Russian.