Russia slaps US for ignoring Gagarin on Spaceflight Day

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has accused the U.S. State Department of spreading disinformation by not mentioning Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in a Facebook post about the International Day of Human Space Flight.

The U.N. General Assembly in 2011 proclaimed the annual observance held on the anniversary of the one-orbit solo mission that made him Gagarin the first man in space on April 12, 1961.

A post on the State Department’s Russian-language page Sunday noted the first manned spaceflight took place 59 years ago but didn’t name the person who performed it.

The Russian ministry described the omission as “a base trick of the post-truth epoch.”