My comment touched on the massive money problems Russia faces. They are poor compared to us, in a big way.
It reminded me of the meme that the Soviet effort to match our space shuttle was the last straw that broke them economically, in some part.
I do not know if that is actually true, but I know they spent a lot of hard cash on it because they could not fabricate a lot of the complex stuff themselves, and had to buy it on the world market with real money.
So I say to the Russians “Spend, spend, spend”.
They aren’t crippled by entitlement spending like we are, though. And a decade plus of neglect in all aspects of our country.
Right now, we have a second rate Navy that blunders into merchant ships, while we dump billions into making our armed forces “diverse” instead of effective warfighters. That’s a really expensive thing. And they’re not hampered by that at all.
United States 18,569,100 — European Union[n 1][19] 16,408,364 2 China[n 2] 11,218,281 3 Japan 4,938,644 4 Germany 3,466,639 5 United Kingdom 2,629,188 6 France 2,463,222 7 India 2,256,397 8 Italy 1,850,735 9 Brazil 1,798,622 10 Canada 1,529,224 11 South Korea 1,411,246 12 Russia[n 3] 1,280,731 13 Australia 1,258,978 14 Spain 1,232,597 15 Mexico 1,046,002