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Russia Begins Work On a Lunar Lander (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Whether and when Russia will try to send cosmonauts to the moon is an open question. The Putin government has heavily slashed spending on the Russian space program, a measure brought on by declining oil and gas revenues. But, as Popular Mechanics reports, Russian engineers have gone ahead and have started to design a lunar lander for the eventual Russian lunar surface effort. When money is going to be forthcoming for such a vehicle is unknown, though Russia could partner with another country with lunar ambitions, such as China or the European Union.
Honestly, Russia is in the enviable position of already having the critical parts needed for a crewed lunar mission.
They have Soyuz for crewed launches, Proton for heavy uncrewed, plus Angara coming on line to replace the troublesome Proton. Soyuz was originally designed for lunar missions, and could be fairly simply modified for lunar return. Russia also regularly does propellant transfer and autonomous docking and have a large array of storable-propellant upper stages to use, so they could launch the lander partially filled using Proton into a distant lunar orbit and refuel and/or reposition using a Progress vehicle (perhaps tweaked to allow bigger propellant tanks).
Soyuz could dock with a couple of full Briz-M stages in LEO, push out a lunar orbit and meet with the pre-place lander. ...I suspect Russia will not build a mega-rocket like SLS. They don't need to, since they're very good at docking and propellant transfer (something they do regularly on ISS). Which is good because they don't exactly have a lot of money right now.