OREANDA-NEWS  Russian President Vladimir Putin called the head of the American company SpaceX, Elon Musk, a brilliant man. This is reported by RIA Novosti.

"Elon Musk is a brilliant man, just really brilliant. How many such [satellites] do he have in orbit? More than 5,000, and we are only taking the first steps," commented the Russian leader on the launch of the domestic satellite communications project "Dawn".

Putin also said that Russia is in "close contact" with the United States and Musk on space issues.

On October 7, Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google Corporation and a technical consultant, said that the full-fledged launch of the Rassvet satellite group, which is an analogue of the American Starlink, would be a key advantage of Russian troops over the Ukrainian ones.