You got me thinking: both @panpiotr and myself might have missed the GDP per capita.
Hydroponic farms and better recyclable water for our eventual moon base and Mir-2 since it would help in the long term.
I mean, what about the compound effect of immigration, like this Russia should be receiving at least hundreds if not some thousands people immigrating to it, from all of Easter Europe to the Asian Continent, because since like 2007 we are in a position to receive a lot of immigrants as a lot of people that would go to the USA in that part of the world will go to us now as we are the cheaper and closer option and it is visible that year by year that our citizens lives are being improved, so everthing for them would be easier and more affordable.
The number is capped by the government to maintain the social and national cohesion in Russia.
I still doubt it would be able to stop that much considering how Western Europe, the US, and even Mexico have still dealt with illegal immigration. Considering how Afghanistan/Pakistan is we will likely see further migration from them at some point even if its in refugees.
Hum, well i still think that we would have a lot more Immigrants goint to Russia, like in this link https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2022-interactive/ in 2022 Russia still have 11M migrants living there, and well i just think that in the comming years this Union State here can pass that mark very fast, like of course we can't beat the US on this and never will, but it will be a constant grow in the background, like i don't know how much is capped but this would not stop much the tide of people trying to go for ilegal means and reach Russia.
I mean this is just asking for ghettos and increasing political polarization in Russia especially since not everyone is going to share the same anti-refugee bent. We will have to figure something up that does not piss off the less nationalistic/xenophobic of our population.
I don't think it would be wise to annex the Stans. At most we should be thinking about annexing Kazakhstan, due to it's high Ethnic Russian population, but even this should be a stretch, considering we would be adding millions of Muslins to the Russian Federation, when even one small province of one million inhabitants already caused that much headache in the 90s.
So I just went and did some really rough calculations and by 2027 we are looking at a population of 251 million - likely with a significantly lower median age compared to OTL Russia. Again I did lowball it a bit because I'm predicting a slowdown in birthrates beginning to occur toward the end of the 2010s. So we'd definitely be at a level of the US without needing to add in the stans. Although honestly by that point there should be massive alarm bells in the US going on about a near-peer who is a definite peer in per capita income. Selfishly this means I'd like Ukraine's per capita to be a good deal lower than Russia's lol so that if we do incorporate them into the Union State our population increases and our per capita goes down.
Sounds pretty accurate, my rough calculation yielded 207 million in 2015. Just to clarify tho the net increase in population was ~4.95 million (cause I had to also factor in the death rate) without immigration. So although Russia is definitely becoming more diverse but because the main chunk of births are still Russians the percentage changes aren't too great and probably still won't be long term either.
I've always been in favour of adding Kazakhstan not just because of the ethnic Russian component but also because the size of our economy is going to cause an exponential increase in the influence Russia has in Kazakhstan compared to OTL (which is already pretty high to begin with). Not to mention I think a large part of the influx of immigrants has likely been from them. I'd also assume the Othodox Church has likely become somewhat more of a force in Kazakhstan just due to the fact they have more monetary influence due to a richer Russian congragation and the support and money we gave them a few years back when trying to correct Soviet-era mistakes. I don't think its a stretch to assume the Othodox Church has heavy missionary activities going on in the nation - which would likely also be creating new tensions.
There are issues though. While we have ITTL a richer Japan then OTL, allowing them to fuel their economy with even more Union State resources. But with the latest updates, Cars, LCVs etc are very much less interesting to our population. So our trade would have to base much more on robotics and other industrial mechanisation tooling.
I can say for 100% that the Russian leadership does not have in plans incorporating states like Georgia, Armenia and stans (except for Russian dominated oblasts in Kazakhstan), as they have learned the lesson from USSR. The Union State now consisting of Russia, Belarus, Transnistria and Gaguazia is a Slavic and Orthodox union and it will remain this way. The Russian leadership does not want to repeat problems with Caucasus and Central Asia like USSR had back in 80s. Also they learned the lesson from the Soviet collapse in 80s very well, and are making sure that none of Soviet mistakes would be ever repeated. Also, with the Union State we are in process of 3rd Russian imperial project (after Russian Empire and the USSR) , whether we like it or not.
They operate in Africa, Middle East and South America, where they offer regimes security in exchange for the transfer of diamond and gold mining contracts to Russian companies. In Syria and Libya the act as additional personal guard for Gaddafi and Assad. Also Wagner Group provides security and protection to governments and in return, Russian and Wagner-linked companies have been given privileged access to those countries' natural resources, such as rights to gold and diamond mines, while the Russian state has been given access to strategic locations such as airbases or ports. This has been described as a kind of state capture, whereby Russia gains influence over those states and they become dependent on it
Speaking of which, we need a tighter grip on PMCs like Wagner. For starters, they should never be in a position where they could even attempt a coup against us, and second, the Americans' willingness to let their PMCs run with less restrictions than the regular military is an opportunity. That is, we should have our PMCs operate under no less restrictions as the regular military, i.e. just because they're PMCs and not state military, doesn't mean they can run fast and loose with rules of war.
