"has become a big time player" you act as if it has just reached this level. Russia has ALWAYS been the most advanced space country in the world.
From Sputnik til the fall of the soviet union and onward, Russia has been a leader in space and consistently reached milestones before the U.S. in
almost EVERY space category from first animals in space to first man in space, first woman, etc.
Russia holds almost every single space record of value, the only thing they lost out on was the moon.
To this day the total astronaut man hours completed in space is the following
1. Russia total days in space: 19,658
2. USA total days in space: 14,066
as you can see not even close.
To this day Russia has been the first and only country to have its own consistently inhabited real space station the MIR and now NASA asks Russia to
even bring its own astronauts up into space on the Soyuz not to mention wants to purchase Russian rockets.
So I'm just saying, it's slightly misleading to make it sound like Russia only now has gotten into the space race. Russia was always the leader in
space and as can be seen by your article remains the leader in space to this day.




