Rich and Bobko, please help me to understand.
Sure.
The Russian economy is equal to that of Italy
I'll put it in simple terms, and borrow a little from Ray Dalio (big hedge fund guy).
At the time Apple's valuation was around 2 trillion dollars, and the size of Russia's GDP was approximately the same.
Dalio said: "If somebody gave you a choice between owning Apple and owning Russia, what would you choose? I would choose Russia." Now that's a stupid comparison, because a company's market cap is the amount of money it would cost to own the company in its entirety for perpetuity... whereas GDP is just an annual figure. Still... maybe you see my point.
If given the choice, what country would you choose to own - Italy or Russia? I think 90% of the globe's citizens would choose Russia, without necessarily knowing anything about their economies. I think Italians themselves would be surprised at this comparison.
Why Russia is not Italy:1) Russia has nearly the entire periodic table underground, and enough energy to power a quarter of the world. Italy is a net energy importer.
2) Russia's economy is much more geared towards resource extraction, heavy industry, and the military. Italy's is geared towards making consumer goods, which is great, but doesn't translate into much power projection ability.
3) Italy is tiny - that is, lacking strategic depth. If they get invaded, there's not much time on the clock before they have to fold. Russia's size makes it much harder to coerce.
4) Even though it's much reduced, Russia still has significant influence over countries in the former Soviet Union, in Africa, in Latin America. Italy has influence over nobody - not even Libya or Ethiopia.
5) Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council. Italy is not.
6) Russia has the world's largest nuclear arsenal. Italy doesn't possess a single nuke.
7) Russia has more than twice the manpower of Italy.
I could go on, but hopefully you can see that a simple head-to-head GDP comparison can obscure many important factors that are material to a discussion about Russian capabilities.