When will Russia become the world's fifth biggest economy? Don't ask Vladimir Putin.
Our thanks to Julia Davis for drawing our attention to this trend.Sources for Putin’s statements in 2007 , 2008 , 2011 , again in 2011 , 2012 , and 2018 . In 2013, Putin said Russia had entered the world’s top five biggest economies, but only in terms of gross domestic product. In “key indicators such as labor productivity,” he said, there was a “two- to three-fold gap” with developed countries. Photo on front page: Alexey Druzhinin / Sputnik / EPA / Scanpix / LETA