This is half of the picture - there's no "single Russia". The population is fundamentally split between supporters of progress, religious orthodoxists and quasi-criminal gangs on the top.
"Russia is entering a period of decline and political decay. The population is ageing, while the real income of its middle class is falling. Putin has failed to diversify the economy, and global demand for hydrocarbons is set to fall over the next decade."
@kravietz also, if Russia was *really* that bad for the ordinary person to live in, we would be seeing a lot more attempts at unauthorised migration of citizens to countries like the UK?
But I hardly ever hear about Russians getting trouble from Border Force (if anything they are actively welcomed in to Blighty, provided they have money and aren't openly committing too much crime (at least on UK soil)
Illegal immigration is a different story - those you see in Calais were really literally struggling for life, and neither Russia nor Belarus are even close. It's just what the article says - economic stagnation.
If you can emigrate legally, for example if you work in high-demand sector such as IT, people emigrate a lot. Lots of Russians working in EU, even in Poland, which has the advantage of being in Schengen but at the same pretty close geographically and culturally.
Also UK is by far not the most attractive destination to live for medium income Russians - weather sucks, property prices are ridiculous and you are basically stuck on an island without Schengen visa, especially after Brexit. You will see many more Russians working and living in EU, like Germany or Spain, or Malta, Cyprus, and other places with nice climate. UK is attractive for Russian cronies and it has been unfortunately positioning itself as such for years.
Of course it's not black-and-white. Ukraine is technically at war with Russia but it still buys hydrocarbon and uranium - they just diversified their supplies to reduce Kremlin's leverage.
EU and UK made a number of strategic mistakes in the past by tolerating Russian money laundering and crime (in Spain, UK) or state-sponsored terrorism (in UK, Germany), which only encouraged Putin.
If you talk with people in Russia, they literally consider EU and UK to be "pussies" 🤷
Well, half of the Internet is using Nginx which is formally F5 project but originated and developed in Russia. World of Tanks is Belarus, War Thunder is Russia as well I think.
In general Russian engineering is world-class and the country could export much more than just raw materials.
The problem is that whatever company reaches certain level in Russia, parasites from countless security services come and basically take it over, turning it into shit.
@kravietz
it is somewhat hard to claim "principled indiferrence" when the EU and UK is still dependent on Russia for hydrocarbons, even if we all move towards EVs some natural gas will still be used for the power generation.
also some companies such as Virginmedia use Russian equipment as key infrastructure due to the cost savings (look inside a VM box next time some kids open it up and you might see the Cyrillic writing on the coax cable amplifiers)