Looks like the russians have been suckered again.
the quote from the actual article
http://rbth.ru/articles/2012/03/16/roscosmos_takes_on_nasa_15096.html
due to "Accounts Chamber Chairman Sergei Stepashin" that "“Indeed, heavy lift launch vehicles are also an indispensable element – no interplanetary spacecraft can be put into orbit without them,” he said.
Suggested they are going to chase the US model. Rocket engineers going back to Werner von Braun have known better.
This is a *very* poor choice and use of budget. The Augustine commission went to some trouble to find out what you a space programme could do with *existing* launchers.
They realized propellent is the biggest *single* lump of mass that has to go to orbit but is the *simplest* to sub-divide *provided* you have a big storage tank in orbit. While big it is light, so it can still sit on on top of an existing launcher.
Russia also has a back catalogue of very high efficiency engines running everything *except*LH2.Proton runs with storables propellant and on orbit refueling exercises have already been carried out with these, although LOX/Kero would be a much better choice given similarly developed engines. On orbit fuel transfer would also give Russia *unique* capabilities which would be "one up" on both the US and China (and India), despite *decades* of NASA saying it would be a really good idea if they developed this capability.
The USSR developed a space shuttle because their engineers looked at the design and concluded it could not be operated for the costs NASA claimed (which was true). Russian politicians concluded it was a conspiracy to do something else and insisted on having one just like it.
They failed to take into account NASA (and the US aerospace industries) fondness for protecting jobs at *almost* any cost (provided it's paid by the taxpayers of course).
In a world where information is supposedly *much* more freely available astute Russian merkin watchers should have realized this a *long* time ago. Never attribute to planning for a surprise military attack what simple (very well funded) political lobbying and political self-interest can do just as well.
Russintards, you are about to be had.