Moscow, April 8 (RHC)-- The U.S. has declared outer space a legal equivalent of the Wild West, and Russia believes it may lead to dangerous consequences like many policies of territorial expansion did in the past.

Russia's space agency was not impressed by President Donald Trump's executive order, which doesn't see space "as a global commons."  Sergey Savelyev, Roscosmos deputy director responsible for international cooperation, said: "Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to de facto seize the territories of other planets will hardly encourage other nations to participate in fruitful cooperation."

He was responding to Washington's attempts to draw private companies and foreign nations into the recovery and use of resources in space by assuring them that they may take whatever they want out there, legally speaking.  "Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery and use of resources in outer space," Trump's executive order declared. 

It's not the first time that the United States has eyed outer space resources.  In 2015, Congress signed a law paving the way for American companies to harvest what they find on the Moon and asteroids.