“I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station,” Borisov added, calling it the space programme’s main “priority”.

“Good,” Putin replied in comments released by the Kremlin.

But Robyn Gatens, the director of the space station for Nasa, said her Russian counterparts have not communicated to the US agency their intent to withdraw from the ISS, as required by the station’s intergovernmental agreement.

“Nothing official yet,” Gatens said at an ISS conference in Washington. “We literally just saw that as well. We haven’t got anything official.”

Until now space exploration was one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the US and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.

Borisov said the space industry was in a “difficult situation”.

He said he would seek “to raise the bar, and first of all, to provide the Russian economy with the necessary space services”, pointing to navigation, communication, and data transmission, among other things.

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Russian cosmonauts spacewalk outside International Space Station for a 7-hour mission

Russian cosmonauts spacewalk outside International Space Station for a 7-hour mission

Sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier are among key accomplishments of the Soviet space programme and remain a major source of national pride in Russia.

But experts say the Russian space agency remains a shadow of its former self and has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

Borisov, a former deputy prime minister with a military background, has replaced Dmitry Rogozin, a firebrand nationalist politician known for his bombastic statements and eccentric behaviour.

Additional reporting by Reuters