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Russia has rubbished reports suggesting its cosmonauts wore yellow suits with blue accents to show solidarity with Ukraine, the Associated Press reports.

The three cosmonauts wore the suits, bearing the colours of the Ukrainian flag, when arriving at the International Space Station (ISS) leading to speculation they were a show of support for the country which is under attack by Russia.

However, on Saturday, Russia dismissed the idea as fanciful.

Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev said each crew picks the colours about six months before launch because the suits need to be individually sewn. He added that they were chosen because all three graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University and so they chose the colours of their prestigious alma mater.

In a statement on the Russian space agency’s Telegram channel, Artemyev said:

There is no need to look for any hidden signs or symbols in our uniform. A colour is simply a colour. It is not in any way connected to Ukraine. Otherwise, we would have to recognise its rights to the yellow sun in the blue sky.

These days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and our people!

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the space agency Roscosmos, tweeted a picture of the university’s blue and gold coat of arms.

Shortly after their arrival at the orbiting station on Friday, Artemyev had a different answer about the flight suits, saying there was a lot of the yellow material in storage and “that’s why we had to wear yellow”.

In this photo taken from video footage released by the Roscosmos Space Agency, Russian cosmonauts Оleg Аrtemiev, center, Denis Мatveev, right, and Sergei Korsakov are wearing yellow suits as they arrive at the ISS Photograph: AP© Provided by The Guardian In this photo taken from video footage released by the Roscosmos Space Agency, Russian cosmonauts Оleg Аrtemiev, center, Denis Мatveev, right, and Sergei Korsakov are wearing yellow suits as they arrive at the ISS Photograph: AP

The Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, has played down hostile comments by Rogozin in the wake of the invasion, after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies.

“That’s just Dmitry Rogozin,” Nelson told the Associated Press. “He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us.

The Russian invasion has resulted in canceled launches and broken contracts. Many worry Rogozin is putting decades of work at risk, most notably regarding the International Space Station.

Besides threatening to pull out of the space station and drop it on the US, Europe or elsewhere, Rogozin had the flags of other countries covered on a Soyuz rocket awaiting liftoff with internet satellites.

The launch was called off after the customer, London-based OneWeb, refused Rogozin’s demand that the satellites not be used for military purposes and the British government halt financial backing.

On Thursday, the European Space Agency confirmed that it was indefinitely suspending its ExoMars rover mission with Roscosmos because of the war in Ukraine.

“Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues,” Nelson said. “The professional relationship between astronauts and cosmonauts, it hasn’t missed a beat. This is the cooperation we have going on in the civilian space program.”

The US and Russia are the prime operators of the space station, which has been occupied for 21 years.

Nasa has said Vande Hei’s plans remain unchanged, despite a video in early March allegedly produced by Roscosmos that showed two Russian cosmonauts waving him goodbye. It then showed a mission control team watching a computer-generated video of the Russian segment of the station detaching and floating away.

The video, which includes a Russian song titled Farewell, was shared by the news agency RIA Novosti. Its caption read: “The Roscosmos television studio jokingly demonstrated the possibility of Russia withdrawing from the ISS project – the undocking of the Russian segment of the station, without which the American part of the project cannot exist.”

In a response, the Russian state news agency Tass said, “American astronaut Mark Vande Hei will return to Earth on 30 March onboard the Russian Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, together with Anton Skelper and Piotr Dubrow … Rosco's mos has never given reason to doubt its reliability as a partner.”