Onboard were Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, as well as US astronaut Donald Pettit.

The Soyuz MS-26 took off around 7:23 pm Moscow time (1623 GMT), glowing brightly as it soared through the atmosphere, video published by Russia's Roscosmos space agency showed.

An announcer on the video said the metrics of the launch were "normal", as the crew could be seen sitting in their space suits in the Soyuz descent module.

Their spacecraft later entered orbit, the announcer said.

Once a space-faring pioneer, Russia has faced multiple setbacks since the collapse of the USSR, including the loss of two Mars missions and its first lunar probe in almost 50 years in 2023.

Space is one of the final areas of US-Russia cooperation amid an almost complete breakdown in relations between Moscow and Washington over the Ukraine conflict.