The official confirmation of Moscow's move to end participation in the ISS after 2024 comes amid friction between the Kremlin and the West over Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine and several rounds of devastating sanctions against Russia, including its space sector.

"Of course, we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made," Yury Borisov, the new head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, told President Vladimir Putin, according to a Kremlin account of their meeting.

"I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station," Borisov added, calling it the domestic space program's main "priority."

"Good," Putin replied.

Space experts said Russia's departure from the International Space Station would seriously affect the country's space sector and deal a major blow to its program of manned flights, a major source of Russian pride.

The ISS is due to be retired after 2024, although US space agency NASA says it can remain operational until 2030.

Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS for NASA, when asked whether she wanted the US-Russia space relationship to end, she replied: "No, absolutely not."

Until now, space exploration has been one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the United States and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.

Space expert Vadim Lukashevich said space science cannot flourish in a heavily sanctioned country.

"If the ISS ceases to exist in 2024, we will have nowhere to fly," Lukashevich told AFP. "At stake is the very preservation of manned flights in Russia, the birthplace of cosmonautics."

Pointing to Russia's growing scientific and technological isolation, Lukashevich said the authorities could not plan more than several months in advance and added that even if Russia builds an orbiting station, it would be a throwback to the 1980s.

"It will be archaic, like an old woman's flat, with a push-button telephone and a record-player," he said.

Space analyst Vitaly Yegorov struck a similar note, saying it was next to impossible to build a new orbiting station from scratch in a few years.

"Neither in 2024, nor in 2025, nor in 2026 will there be a Russian orbital station," Yegorov told AFP.

He added that creating a fully-fledged space station would take at least a decade of "the most generous funding".

Yegorov said Russia's departure from the ISS meant Moscow might have to put on ice its program of manned flights "for several years" or even "indefinitely".

The move could also see Russia abandon its chief spaceport, Baikonur, which it is renting from Kazakhstan, Yegorov said.

Experts say Roscosmos is now a shadow of its former self and has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

Borisov, appointed in mid-July, replaced Dmitry Rogozin, a firebrand politician known for his bombastic statements.

Rogozin had previously warned that without cooperation from Moscow, the ISS could de-orbit and fall on US or European territory.

In a possible sign of disagreement with Borisov, Vladimir Solovyov, chief designer at spacecraft manufacturer Energia, said Russia should not rush to quit the ISS.

"If we halt manned flights for several years, then it will be very difficult to restore what has been achieved," he was quoted as telling the Russky Cosmos magazine.

"We haven't received any official word from the partner (Russia) as to the news today," director of the ISS for NASA, Robyn Gatens, said during a conference on the outpost.

Gatens was responding to an announcement by newly appointed Roscosmos chief Yury Borisov.

"Of course, we will fulfill all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made," Borisov told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station," Borisov added, calling it the space program's main "priority."

"Good," Putin replied in comments released by the Kremlin.

NASA itself plans to retire the ISS -- a symbol of post Cold War unity -- after 2030 as it transitions to working with commercial space stations, and Gatens suggested Russia might be thinking about its own transition.

Asked whether she wanted the US-Russia space relationship to end, she replied: "No, absolutely not."

"They have been good partners, as all of our partners are, and we want to continue together as the partnership to continue operating space station through the decade."

Until now, space exploration was one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the United States and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.