Most of the things you mentioned are leftovers from the Soviet days, and are presently in decline. > Their economy is growing As the other commenters said, th

Most of the things you mentioned are leftovers from the Soviet days, and are presently in decline. > Their economy is growing As the other commenters said, that's a war economy, plus some creative bookkeeping/regulation. > and they are integrating with several other regional players. The past few years have shown the CSTO¹, EEU², CIS³, etc. are a joke. > They are energy and food self-sufficient So are Canada, Brazil, Australia, Indonesia… > relatively large and well educated population Aging and dying. "Demographic crisis". Same for Japan, but at least Japan's doing better in most other metrics. > launch payloads into space on the regular "Regular", in the sense that the launch rate collapsed by over 80% in the late 1980s, and hasn't recovered⁴, even as the US and PRC have been exploding. > export complex things like nuclear reactors. So do Germany, France, Canada, the Netherlands— Most advanced economies, really. > On the military side, they are one of the only that could sink an entire carrier battle group or an entire city in a flash. Their flagship needs a tugboat following for when it bursts into flames⁵. They've built a grand total of 36 "5th-generation" combat aircraft, which are apparently less advanced⁶ than most countries' newer 4th-gen fighters⁷. They've even used up their stockpiles of tens of thousands of ancient tanks (at least the ones that hadn't already been rusted and looted irreparably) at a rate⁸ they'll never be able to replace. Nuclear weapons aren't hard if you have a civilian nuclear energy sector. Rockets are old tech unless you're looking at non-chemical propulsion, reusable boosters, etc. Lots of countries could do those things within a couple years if needed, but we don't because they don't usually make enough sense unless you're already a superpower in other ways⁹. Russia does a large number of flashy things, but it's for prestige, momentum, and autarky, and they can do less and less of it each year, rather than expressing any actual economic power. They probably could have done quite well by focusing on tech/cultural, manufacturing, and resource exports. But wealthy nations won't buy from them now they've gone mask-off with the genocidal aggression, and their civil society is too corrupt to the core to fix itself. --- 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Nagorno-Karabakh_War#Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Nagorno-Karabakh_War#Ru... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union#Econom... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93Commonwealth_of_Independent_States_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93Commonwealth_o... 4. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1327132/payloads-launched-russia/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1327132/payloads-launche... 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraft_carrier_Admiral_Kuznetsov#2016%E2%80%932017_deployment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraft_carrier_Admir... 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-57#Stealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-57#Stealth 7. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/stealth-aircraft-rcs.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/stealth-aircra... 8. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/09/russian-tanks-depleted-stock-heavy-losses-ukraine/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/09/russian-ta... 9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency