“We confirm all our decisions, moving forward step by step and our cooperation is absolutely progressive… Today we set the task on the associate membership and set no other tasks,” she said after visiting CERN.

“Membership in CERN will open for Russia a broader access both to participation in projects and to results of these projects, as well as to all educational programs,” she added.

The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest particle accelerator launched in 2008, was built with the prime goal of either finding the Higgs boson, whose existence was predicted by British physicist Peter Higgs in the 1960s, or disproving it, possibly undermining the Standard Model.

Last month researchers operating the LHC particle accelerator confirmed that a particle discovered in July 2012 is indeed the so-called Higgs boson, a key element in scientists' theories explaining the makeup of all the matter around us.