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Not economy-wise. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s.

• fmajid 7y ago
  It's bigger in PPP terms, but yes, Russia is a mostly irrelevant in economics terms, apart from commodity markets like oil.
• Barrin92 7y ago
  That is irrelevant. What matters as far as international affairs is concerned is state capacity. And the ability of the Russian state to project power, both towards Eastern Europe but also predominantly in the Middle East is still immense. If you look at how strongly the Russian influence has been on Kazakhstan very deeply into the personal life of citizens of a traditionally vastly different culture you'll be surprised how able the Russian state still is, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The same is still happening in Turkey, Syria and Iraq and Iran where Russia has pretty effectively replaced the US. The very naive economic centric view is the same sort of logic people employed shortly before the collapse of the British empire. It's a very unreliable and short-termist metric.
  • roenxi 7y ago
    > The very naive economic centric view is the same sort of logic people employed shortly before the collapse of the British empire. It's a very unreliable and short-termist metric. The US empire collapsing is a different kettle of fish to this strange notion that Russia is a world power. Sure, Trump saying the US economy is strong isn't going to stave anything off that might happen geopolitically. But whatever happens it is unlikely that the world will be bowing and scraping to Russia in the way that China or America can demand. A huge economy is necessary to exert global power and be called a geopolitical pole. This applies even if they do control Kazakhstan.