Russian space chief says U.S. diplomats 'a**holes' for ignoring space anniversary

Sixty years ago on Monday, Russia put the first man into space.

While the achievement was noted across the world, the U.S. said little.

The State Department’s Russian-language Facebook page posted a short message on Monday commemorating what it called the "anniversary of peoples' stay in space," and paid tribute to "international cooperation facilitated by space exploration."

 The post featured a picture of an American astronaut performing a spacewalk.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, ripped the U.S. for the post. He took to Twitter later on Monday and called U.S. officials “a**holes,” adding that "superpowers don’t behave like this."

On Tuesday, the Russian Embassy in Washington blasted the State Department, saying it had "again demonstrated memory loss regarding the history of space exploration."

"Our forgetful colleagues can find the bust of the space pioneer at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Sculptures of Yuri Gagarin also were erected in Cleveland, Colorado Springs, New York City, Houston and Chicago," the envoys said. "Thousands of Americans, including astronauts and NASA personnel, visit these sites every year to honor the memory of the Soviet cosmonaut."

The embassy also pointed out that last week a NASA astronaut was flown to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft named after Gagarin. 

"Let's hope that these facts will help American diplomats in the future not to be shy to say out loud the name of the first cosmonaut on Earth," Moscow’s representatives concluded.