2 ms·

The Netherlands is 17th, 18m population. With the population and resources Russia has you might expect them to be higher up.

• unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  It's a reasonable point. Russia does have some structural disadvantages compared with the Netherlands (e.g. it is stretched out over a whole lot of extremely cold territory and it has a crumbling soviet infrastructure in places where it should not) but is in the position that it is in quite a large part due to corruptly exfiltrated wealth over almost two generations. Money that should have gone to fixing that infrastructure has instead disappeared out of the country, starting in smaller ways through the more western-friendly comecon states and then accelerating with every market reform. That money now creates wealth entirely in the West and has done for thirty years.
  • watwut 5y ago
    It has also heavily corrupt economic and state administration. That is actual disadvantage too.