Quite frankly, I think GDP is a poor standard of determining a country’s economic strength and health. Purchasing Power Parity is a more useful metric, since it accounts for price differences between markets.
Consider the tables on this page here, which takes into account PPP when ranking GDP: whether you go by IMF, World Bank, or CIA figures, Russia ranks 6th: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
To say Russia is a third world country economically is not only historically ignorant (because the whole terminology of ‘first world, second world, third world’ is an artifact of the Cold War: First World referred to the West, Second World referred to the Soviet-Sino sphere, whilst the Third World referred to countries which were nominally not aligned with either), but it isn’t even born out by statistical data, or reality on the ground. Would a third world country be able to proverbially hold Europe hostage (as was the case before the Nord Stream sabotage)?
No: it only testifies to the reality of just how much of a player Russia is on the energy markets. For a country of their size, it’s pretty much an inevitability from a practical standpoint.
And at the end of the day, what position would you rather be in, geopolitically speaking: an economy geared towards services (as America now is), or an economy that actually has a large stranglehold on energy sources and raw materials?
I’ve been to Russia about a dozen times from 1992 to the 2000s. I was amazed how backwards it was on my first trip. I was amazed how modern it had become on my last trip.