[What ‘explosive growth’ in the Baltic are you talking about? Estonia is a single semi-decent Baltic state end the rest are basket cases living off EU sibsidies like they were living off Russian sibsidies under USSR. ]
The Baltics have negligible natural resources relative to Russia’s. For both economies to have similar economic profiles once you remove the resource extraction component, Russia’s GDP per capita should be 50% larger than the Baltics’. In reality, however the Baltics have a 50% larger GDP per capita than Russia. Thus, it would appear that Russia’s the economic basket case, the oil ticks of the north, not the Baltics.
We have discussed the relation between mineral deposits and actual wealth more than once. I have more than once explained to you that mineral riches doesn’t mean wealth and I don’t remember if you have reasonably objected.
As for GDP figures it makes sense to see it through the PPP.
1 dollar is buying much more in Russia than it is in US. For Europe it is the opposite.
For that reason it is stupid to compare Russian and Western economies nominally.
The main argument of the proponents of the theory that Russian economy has halved since 2014 are basing their opinion on the fact that Russian currency halved to dollar over that period of time.
The reality is that Russia is quite a self-reliant nation and not that much globalized. That basically means that currency fluctuations, even huge ones, doesn’t affect local economy in a negative way. More so, it helps exporters much.
For internal market it is not a factor unless we are talking about imported products.
When it comes to ‘starving peasants’ the math is that a kilo of chicken was priced at 89 rubles in 2013 in average retail chain and now it is 92 rubles. Potatoes were 14 rubles a kilo and now 9 rubles. The same is true for the rest of groceries unless we are talking about the French wines and gourmet cheeses but not everyone were buying it before anyway.