They hate science and praise the Orthodox ideology with high statism. And without a country-loving science China it's just getting a luxury present for free themselves.
They will progress like crazy with very little efforth and they could buy Russian assets for scraps.
It's more about "ice cream for 47 kopecks" rathan then anything else.
And yet, more than a million Russian lives alone were sacrificed to make the appeal reality.
Russia, like it or not, is actively busy restoring its older glorious days and unfortunately there is no sign of them coming anywhere near to a point where they can't sustain their losses any more. They're permanently losing upwards of 1000 soldiers per day, and that's not counting the injured, only deaths.
As long as we are talking the current war https://www.bbc.com/russian/articles/c5yqkrz2xw1o Russia has 200k+ confirmed (via various sources like obituary, media posts etc) KIA. Even if we count MIA and add something on top - this is way less than mythical "million".
>They're permanently losing upwards of 1000 soldiers per day, and that's not counting the injured, only deaths.
Again - bullshit.
Also see CSIS analysis with numbers: https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-grinding-war-ukraine
Just to be clear: "permanently losing" typically means soldiers who are unable to fight. Not killed ones.
People who lose a limb, for example, are considerent a "permanent loss".
https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2026/0... as an example: "recoverable losses—i.e., those who will never return to the battlefield"
And yes, Russia keeps invading, hacking, politically pressuring and organising disinformation campaigns to make these ex-USSR countries fall back into Russia's bloody wing.
I'm not even talking about very limited influence over other ex-USSR republics. It is there but very limited.