“This support will save them from unacceptable risks and disasters during the launch of manned spacecraft into space,” the official wrote on Telegram.

He also considered ridiculous the claims of the European Space Agency (ESA) about its capabilities to replace Russia in helping India launch its manned program.

“Brussels and Paris don’t even have proper launch vehicles to send modules into near-Earth space, let alone manned spacecraft,” he said.

Rogozin alerted potential partners of any possible cooperation with ESA and drew attention to the halting of several Russian-European projects.

“We saw it when the Europeans interrupted the joint mission with us to Mars in 2020. It was a very bitter experience in our work with them,” he wrote.

Speaking reported during his Thursday speech at the National Industrial Summit held under the slogan “Industrial Policy in New Realities,” that more than 160 Russian satellites, including military ones, are in orbit, a figure he considered low. “There should be thousands,” he said, and stressed that the agency’s current priority is the deployment of a large-scale orbital constellation, which he considered important for the Russian military as well.

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