Plus never underestimate the ability of state run places like Russia and China to screw things up in the name of progress, of course we are pretty good at that ourselves
I agree. Russia is still underdeveloped. I spent some time there and the sense of vast emptiness is noticeable. In the cities, too, you see large areas with virtually no retail development. It’s a huge country, obviously. It’s really not like the EU were everything feels compact and cities relatively close together.
Better retail is in large malls in suburbs. Beats most ‘better developed’ parts of EU let alone former Soviet Bloc.