[Nonstatist]

a vision of a Russia switching from an ageing and uncompetitive Soviet-era infrastructure to an economy centred on high-tech areas such as nanotechnology, nuclear power and the space industry.

Call it a fantasy. Ruusia will be overrun by Chinese in another generation. Drunk, infertile, corrupt, incompetent is no way to go through life, son.

[2001convSVT]

You have that right. Russia = much land and shrinking population, China = rising population and shrinking resources (land). Putin is living in fantasyland if he doesn’t realize that that Chinese on his door step are much more of a problem than the United States across thousands of miles of water are.