Quote Originally Posted by Antonio1986 View Post
Answers based on my understanding as a foreigner with minimal understanding of the actual situation in Russia, but with desire to learn about it:
The 36% of the GDP is really based on heavy industry, but the significant part of it are oil-gas, and as you can see we don`t export much of anything else



Steel exports are 8 % and machines - 6 %, food 4 % and that`s it, now it can be suggested that the current situation (in 2014-2015) might be even worse. Since everyone hates us. Like Ukrainians who intentionally boycott our food.

Don`t be naive about our military power. The old technologies still might be interesting for some 3rd-world countries but even this is starting to decay. You can learn that almost half of rockets literally will never reach its target (check Статистика испытаний советских и российских БРПЛ https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91...5%D1%82%D0%B0) - section "успешные"). Russians are good at showing their flabby muscles and rusty rockets, but it`s not about the amounts of tanks you have, but how modern they are. By the way... When you check wikipidea lists - you probably get impressed about the number of military personell and tanks, but the secret is that Russia can barely protect it`s own borders. Only ~35 thousand out 1 million soldiers are professionals, everyone else are rookies recruited due to our conscription who often don`t even have a chance to practice their shooting skills at least once during 12-months service. Concerning tanks... only god knows how many we actually do have and which are ready to be used. Same with airplanes - interceptors fall from time to time during tests (recently Mig-29 fell in Moscow suburbs Истребитель МиГ-29 упал в ста метрах от здания школы в Подмосковье - Первый по срочным новостям — LIFE | NEWS).

Space industry is over for Russia as well - google it. It`s not competitive any longer. We don`t have such guys like Elon Musk (he is a real Steve Jobs in space industry in case you haven`t heard of him). Our oligarchs who came to their fortunes by nationalisation and other semi-legal schemes don`t have much of a talent in order to develop something unique. Promises to creat a brand new russian vehicle are forgotten. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Mobile "Ё-мобиль") But I don`t blame them... Russia is definetely no the best soil to organize a multimillion businesses because you can loose it at any moment and get behind bars when someone wants to tackle it using his political or executive power.

Russia is corrupted, but USA and China has biggest inequality on income based on the Gini Coefficient. Perhaps USA has more poor people per analogy of population than Russia.
- yeah, tell this to Russians, test your destiny... Again, you`ve heard about "USA inequality" but that`s a complete joke. You haven`t seen the reality yet. Millions of Russians work as teachers, doctors, in sales, on factories (of those great heavy industries you mentioned)... just for less than 200-300 $ \ month. Some come to Moscow for earnings, working 45 days in retail large stores (like french Auchan), doing $800 for that period, spending 12-14 hours on legs. Don`t forget that prices on food in Russia are higher than in USA since we import the majority of it. At the same time some made multimillion (or billion) fortunes just in several years without working hard, by just finding themselves at the right plce on the right time.

These countries cannot be compared with Russia, because they are protectorates of the Big Powers (new colonies).
- of course they can be compared. We started under same conditions 20 years ago. Their economies used to be damaged by our communist regime as well. And - again - they had no such amount of natural resources. That`s even if you make me to believe in your "new colony" absurdity. If we had enough will - we could diversify our economy, invest in education and scienece, but decided to spent much of an incomes on military (like useless Cruisers in Medittarian Sea, Mistral ship etc etc), Olympics 2014, FIFA 2018 and other toys. We had all kind of possibilites and fcuked them up. (And why everyone is so sure that americans are the reason why countries like South Korea or eastern Europe states came from ashes to prosperity? They have got nothing else to do to feed 60 millions Polands? That`s a complete russian-propaganda nonsence, explaining our laziness.)

Quote Originally Posted by Antonio1986 View Post
7. As an economist I recognise that some times dignity is more important than money. If Russians consider that they do anything they do (whether is called invasion in Georgia or invation in Ukraine) for dignity I respect this. If they do all this just to increase the money and power of some oligarchs, I feel sorry of them. But as I understood Russians consider that Crimea has always been part of Russia (if I am not wrong the majority of population there are Russians), as Greeks consider that Cyprus has always been part of Greece (80% Greek population). The difference that Greeks never had the balls to enter and take back Cyprus, but Russians had the balls to enter and take Crimea.
Dignity?

We broke the law. We became a non-grata country. We used to be a full member of civilized world, now the whole world detests us. Don`t mix "balls" with russian stupidity. That doesn`t matter what the population of Crimea consists of (actually tatars and ukrainians were at least % 25-40 of it - so they had to leave their homes). The land belongs to Ukraine, that`s what matters. With russians or without on it.

Russians should learn the history first. And then, to learn to respect the law. Since we are not able to - I can`t see any "dignity" in taking by force something that doesn`t belong to us. Then no one will invest in our economy, no Elon Musk will occur here willing to spend biliions on researches. If the government doesn`t respect the private property -
no one will respect us.

And I don`t care about sences of my dear nationals, their fear ofNATO or smth... Wanna live in peace? 1. Create professional army (do not expand your power everywhere from Cuba to Black Sea and Syria, but be humble and smart... we are not USA and cannot be like them.) 2. Act correctly on international arena.

Horror stories about NATO were writted in order to make the nation believe that enemies are everywhere. In fact, there is nothing concertning safety. That`s just the way of pursuing someones political goals.