It would be sad if Russia beat the United States to Mars, but on the flip side if they could do it by 2013 that would be amazing:
"Russia's new space agency chief said Monday that a manned mission to Mars in the near future is realistic provided funding is adequate, and appeared to express support for an ambitious plan to visit the planet within a decade, the Interfax news agency reported. "The project is very interesting and I am not turning it down," Interfax quoted space agency chief Anatoly Perminov as saying in Berlin, apparently referring to a plan announced last month to send a six-man crew to Mars. "Any project is flatly rejected by some and fully supported by others at first. We hold a fairly progressive, professional, neutral stance. We support it, and it should be further developed," he said.
Georgy Uspensky, a researcher at the Central Research Institute for Machine-Building, Russia's premier authority on space equipment design, said in April that it would carry out the project with funding promised by Aerospace Systems, a little-known private Russian company that says it draws no resources from the state budget. Uspensky said the small US$3-5 billion budget for the mission reflected plans to use already developed spacecraft, and predicted it would happen around 2011-2013."