I bet the Russian oligarchs beg to differ.

People from ex-USSR countries do however seem generally have strong math and science skills, and (for some reason) many women end up in software engineering. Western countries can probably learn something from that.

Russia is so economically backwards exactly because those oligarchs siphon most of the wealth created there, and export it.

Isn't that generally what happens in most developing countries regardless, e.g. you put your wealth somewhere where it's safe?

I would assume Swiss and Luxembourg based banks these days have a lot more clients from ex-ussr countries than say the US and EU countries, because there is greater risk of confiscation (in different ways) of assets in those countries.

If you managed to somehow (honestly) make $50m in Russia, would you really keep it in Russia? I think the answer is probably no.

> China is an economic superpower. Russia is an economic backwater with nukes.*

*: figures measured in russia-ostracizing western funny money

Russia's GDP is less than half that of the UK, and 1/10th that of China's.

I'm pretty sure that's scale-invariant.

when your 'GDP' consists largely of imaginary service sector income particularly in financial services, I beg to differ..

use any other currency then, what's the difference?

it's currency?

if you are not the country printing the currency, you are at a disadvantage...

The whole world is measured against USD. Least funny money.

or most funny money, with respect to valuing things not related to things important to the USD

The USD is literally the world's reserve currency, has been for many decades.

Russia has repeatedly claimed this is the reason they're an economic backwater, but they're also an economic backwater in any other currency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_by_country ... for starters