A Russian spaceflyer was pulled from SpaceX's next astronaut mission for violating U.S. national security regulations, according to a media report.

Oleg Artemyev, of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, had been manifested on SpaceX's Crew 12, a four-person mission scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) as early as February.

Fellow cosmonaut Andrei Fedyayev recently took his place, a "decision made in connection with Oleg Artemyev’s transfer to another job," Roscosmos officials said today (Dec. 2) in a statement (in Russian; translation by Google). But that's not the whole story, according to the Russian investigative site The Insider.

This morning, The Insider reported that Artemyev, 54, was apparently removed from Crew 12 for violations of ITAR (International Tra

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