This year Roscosmos will make a decision on its participation in operation of the International Space Station (ISS) after 2020, RIA Novosti reports with reference to the head of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Oleg Ostapenko.

“American party is willing to continue operation of ISS beyond 2020. They are going to operate the station until 2024. We said that Russian party would make a decision on the matter and sound our intentions soon. We said “yes” to operation of ISS until 2020. The final decision on our participation in the project after that date will be taken this year,” Ostapenko said at Airshow China-2014.

According to him, the future of ISS was recently discussed in the network of bilateral negotiations held in Paris. NASA chief Charles Bolden, ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall and JAXA President Naoki Okumura took part in the meeting.

“We have discussed a lot of problems connected with further operation of ISS, experimental studies, etc. We have formed a number of working groups responsible for this work. In particular, we decided to arrange another meeting with the Japanese party in February of March 2015 and elaborate work schedule. One of the main items of the agenda is ISS,” Ostapenko noted.

Situation around ISS became serious in May in light of cooling in relations between Moscow and Washington connected with annexation of Crimea by Russia. In response to sanctions against Russia imposed by USA Deputy Chairman of the Russian Government, Dmitry Rogozin, said that Russia is not going to support the position of USA and will not continue operation of ISS after 2020; Russia will allocate funds intended for ISS program for implementation of other projects instead.

On November 4th 2014 chiefs of the world’s leading space agencies taking part in ISS program met in Paris. The parties confirmed that the operation of the station would be extended until 2020. The parties also agreed to continue their close cooperation.