Russians Have Had A spaceprogram for years?

Russians had the ability to lauch a satellite and were working on a manned rockett into outer space. if they had this ability why does the U.S. claim no one else had the ability to build spacecraft. why should Russian capabilities be any less than those of American capabilities . were they no fairly well matched. then is the story about space race accurate that the U.S. beat Russia to the moon instead of meeting them there. DO the Russian still not have a spaceprogram though a considerably reduced one.read about this in a paper.

The first man in space (April 12, 1961) was Yuri Gagarin. The first satellite was Sputnik (Oct 4, 1957). The first spacecraft to land on Venus was Venera. The first spacecraft to fly around the Moon was Lunik. None was American. Sure the Russians have a space program. Even W can't deny that, although don't expect him to know what it is. The US could hardly claim no one else can launch into space, the Brits did it in 1965, and since then France, China, Japan, India, Israel Italy, and the European Space Agency have all launched satellites they have built into space aboard rockets they built for themselves.
There is no question the Soviets at one time hoped to be first on the Moon, but they ran into many problems.

yes they do, they are called Cosmonauts. some of them went into outer space with the space shuttle Atlantis.

I don't think the Russian government really likes the U.S. government because of this among other things.

I think you're confusing a few things.
The Russians had a space program running at the same time the US did, starting in the 1950's.
When the US landed on the moon in 1969, the US said (out of pride, emotion, whatever) that no one else had the ability AT THAT TIME - and they were right, since the Americans were the first to land there.
In fact, Russia was fairly close on the US heels but a series of setbacks delayed theire efforts.

Since then, the US and Russia have been fairly evenly matched - the main problem in the US is that American news (TV, papers) don't devote ANY time on a story that isn't about America.
So the American people know very little about the Russian space program unless they do research - or if US news mentions it when a disaster happens or the Russians achieve something important that can't just be ignored.

Russia has a space program (so does China, Japan, and the European Space Agency, by the way) and in some ways has done more than the US (more Mercury and Venus probes for example).