The White House has temporarily lifted an entry ban imposed on the head of Russia’s federal space agency to allow him to visit the United States, the head of NASA has said in an interview with Russian media.

The U.S. banned entry to and froze the assets of ex-Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, along with other officials it blames for Moscow’s seizure of the Crimean peninsula in March 2014. Rogozin, 54, oversaw Russia’s powerful arms industry before he was appointed to head the Roscosmos state space agency earlier this year.

Rogozin will now be able to travel to the U.S. under a workaround that removes the sanctions for the duration of his visit, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told the state-run TASS news agency Friday.

He did not name a date for the Russian official’s possible visit.

Bridenstine visited Russia last week to oversee a two-man crew’s space launch to the International Space Station (ISS) that ended in the mid-air failure of a Russian rocket.

Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and American astronaut Nick Hague were rescued unharmed after making a dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan after the Soyuz rocket failure last Thursday.