According to RIA Novosti, the first were the commander of the detachment Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.
"Preparations as part of an add-on to the contract with NASA are already underway. We started with my crew. Nikolai Chub was trained at SSRMS (Space Station Remote Manipulator System, arm-manipulator of the American segment of the station), I was trained for a spacewalk, "said Kononenko.
He added that this training will be useful only if only the crew of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft (with one American) will be on board the ISS and there will be a need to perform urgent tasks in the United States segment.
On April 10, the state corporation Roscosmos announced that Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin would go into outer space on April 19.