How to set start page in htaccess?

Question

htaccess

It is necessary to make a redirect to site.ru/projects when entering the site.ru site.
This is the current .htaccess file:

# SEO URL Settings
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ index.php?route=extension/feed/google_sitemap [L]
RewriteRule ^googlebase.xml$ index.php?route=extension/feed/google_base [L]
RewriteRule ^system/download/(.*) index.php?route=error/not_found [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|js|css)
RewriteRule ^([^?]*) index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.site.ru$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://site.ru/$1 [R=301,L]