Look, Raoul.

Never underestimate a nation that lost over 30,000,000 of its people between
the years 1941-1945; that suffered severe and even crippling damage to its industrial, technological and research infrastructure; that lost numerous scientists and engineers in its Gulag - and yet!

YET - four years later, it had the atomic bomb; a Tu-4 heavy bomber as good as the American
B-29; a 1000 kilometer/hour MIG-15 jetfighter; and a 600 kilometer range missile [the R2]...
and, yes, their was this Russian cyberneticist named Doctor Sergey Lebedev who was making
Russia's first digital computer around that time.

And ONLY a little more than 12 years after the end of WW II in 1945 it launched
a Sputnik into orbit, and 2 years later a Lunik that crashed into the Moon, and another Lunik
imaging the farside of Luna - ALL within 15 years of the worst war in history.

Never underestimate Russia's ability to reassert itself in SPACE.
Already Russia is planning a PHOBOS sample-return mission...Don't dismiss their ability
to carry it out.