Because Russia hasn't been accused of imperial behaviour quite enough lately, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin announced on Friday that the nation plans to carve out an area of operations on the moon.
According to Voice of Russia, Rogozin explained to government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Friday that since Russia is "going to come to the moon forever," it doesn't make much sense to keep making trips back and forth. Instead, Rogozin says, Moscow will plan on establishing a permanent base on the moon, which could mean that as its sole human occupants they'd essentially be in control up there.
"It would hardly be rational to make some ten or twenty flights to the moon, and then wind it all up and fly to Mars or some asteroids," Rogozin explained, according to the Voice of Russia translation. The plan follows the same logic as leaving a toothbrush and extra-clothes at your boyfriend's place so you can go straight out, with the difference that this will presumably cost billions of dollars.
This actually isn't the first time that Rogozin has floated the idea of a such a project. As Reuters reported back in 2012, the deputy prime minister told Russian radio that he wanted to "have a big super goal that could pull forward science," which led to him asking "why not try to build a big station on the Moon that would be a base for future 'leaps' of science?"
While the project sounds extremely costly and pretty unfeasible, Max Fisher notes over at Vox that Deputy PM Rogozin is in charge of the nation's aerospace program and thus could realistically try to make this thing happen.
If it's anything like Crimea, expect to hear a lot about moon-appeasement should Russia manage to annex a piece of lunar territory.