🇷🇺 Russia

Russia is the world's largest country by area (17.1 million square kilometers, spanning 11 time zones) with 144 million people and a $1.9 trillion GDP. It's the world's largest exporter of natural gas, second-largest oil exporter, and a major producer of wheat, nickel, palladium, and diamonds. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered the most comprehensive Western sanctions regime in history, fundamentally reshaping global energy markets and geopolitics. Moscow is a city of 13 million with world-class cultural institutions — the Bolshoi, the Hermitage, the Tretyakov Gallery. Russia has the world's largest nuclear arsenal (about 6,000 warheads) and is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The country's demographic decline is severe — the population has been shrinking since the 1990s.

Oil and gas account for about 40% of government revenue and 60% of exports. The economy has proven more resilient to sanctions than many predicted — GDP grew in 2023-24, partly through trade rerouting via China, India, and Turkey. Military spending has surged to about 6% of GDP. China has become the dominant trade partner, replacing the EU. The ruble stabilized after initial collapse but the economy is increasingly militarized and isolated from Western technology. Brain drain has been significant — an estimated 500,000-1 million educated Russians left after the invasion. Inflation runs around 7-8%, and interest rates have been hiked to 16%+.

Russia's Lake Baikal contains about 20% of the world's unfrozen fresh water — more than all the Great Lakes combined. The Moscow Metro is both a transport system and an art gallery, with stations featuring chandeliers, mosaics, and marble columns. Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest railway line in the world at 9,289 km, taking about 6 days to traverse.

Russia's economy has adapted to sanctions better than expected in the short term, but the long-term trajectory is decline — technological isolation, brain drain, demographic collapse, and military spending are all headwinds. The pivot to China creates a new dependency that may prove more constraining than the Western one it replaced.