![]() It’s little wonder that the country that boasted the Okhrana also produced a president who cut his teeth in the KGB. Often this has been achieved through the security services, which are tasked with maintaining state power, not with building an economy. From the time of the czars, it has been the state rather than shared economic prosperity that has kept Russia together. The size of the nation, and the difficulties in areas such as transport associated with its size, makes Russia difficult to govern. Individual regimes can’t be solely blamed for Russian poverty. Life in the countryside is something else entirely. Petersburg and Moscow is luxurious for the wealthy and bearable for the rest. ![]() And in terms of per capita GDP, Russia ranks 85th, nestled between Bulgaria and Malaysia.Įconomic statistics rarely tell the whole story, of course, but in Russia’s case they fairly accurately present a country that is poorer than it appears, masked superficially by a top layer of the superrich elite. Its gross domestic product ranks just behind South Korea’s, a respectable placement but hardly where a superpower should be. It may have increased total wealth, but Russia remains a poor country. The transition from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation wasn’t exactly lucrative. Russia invaded for geostrategic reasons – having Ukraine as a buffer state safeguards Moscow from invasion from the west – and for economic reasons, which have often gone overlooked. As we consider how the war in Ukraine will end, we must first understand how it began.
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