But even according to flawed gdp methodology, the Russian economy is not really that small. It's still Japan/Germany sized, which means its only smaller than India (hard carried by massive population and highly dubious financial sector), US (complete tech supply chain, world's largest financial sector) and China (compete tech supply chain, world's largest market).
Only in GDP PPP. If you use GDP Nominal the Russian economy looks much smaller. Like the size of Mexico or Canada.
Which is ludicrous in the face of it. Just consider the industrial and financial might of those three countries.
Do Canada or Mexico have a space program with their own space launchers? Do they have nukes? What about auto brands?
It is just a ridiculous comparison. Which is why even the CIA does not use GDP Nominal to compare countries. Highly dependent on currency exchange rate and other extraneous factors.
Of course if you start using measures like energy consumption or material production, Russia shoots up even more. However, even "undervalued" gdp doesn't actually undervalue them a lot. Russia certainly performs better than Germany, certainly is worse compared to US or China, and probably is better than India. So the gdp ranking of Russia closely follows Russia's actual performance, with India being the only outlier.
I think GDP PPP is a more fair comparison. But for the MIC many people say the adjustment factor for the GDP PPP isn't nearly good enough.
If you compare things in the PPP basket like food prices it is common for it to be four times cheaper in Russia if you compare Russian and US prices and use the current exchange rate. But for military products it is way more lopsided. I and others have compared prices of aircraft, ships, etc. The state acquisition prices in rubles are public. For nuclear submarines there is like an eight or ten times price gap. Right now we are seeing the same price differential for artillery shells. So some people think the PPP adjustment isn't enough when you consider MIC expenditure.
