By Olesya Astakhova
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia sees big prospects to work with the United States, including in the space sector, and expects to hold talks with Elon Musk soon about flying to Mars, President Vladimir Putin’s international cooperation envoy said on Tuesday.
Kirill Dmitriev, who was named by Putin last month as his special envoy on international economic and investment cooperation, said Russia’s “enemies” were trying to derail U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to restore dialogue with Russia.
Trump was due to speak with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to try to convince the Russian president to accept a ceasefire in his country’s war with Ukraine and move towards a more permanent end to the three-year-old conflict.
Dmitriev said Russia wanted to work with SpaceX CEO Musk as part of Moscow’s efforts to strengthen and develop Russia’s space agency Roscosmos and state nuclear corporation Rosatom.
“I think that there will undoubtedly be a discussion with Musk (about Mars flights) in the near future,” Dmitriev said at a business forum in Moscow, going on to praise Musk’s efforts to push the boundaries of human achievement.
Dmitriev said he was in touch with Roscosmos, Russian business and the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.
Billionaire entrepreneur Musk was among Trump’s biggest donors in the 2024 election and has become one of the president’s closest White House advisers.
Russia said in 2022 it would start work on its own Mars mission after the European Space Agency (ESA) suspended a joint project in the wake of Putin’s decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.
(Reporting by Olesya Astakhova; Additional reporting by Anna Kozlova; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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