> I've heard that before though. I don't think you can compare economies like that since Russia has "near infinite potential" in natural resources, people, etc which Italy doesn't.

Fair enough. But most of the time, the figure is not used to say that Italy is more advanced than Russia, for whatever definition of advanced. It’s a check in the other direction: even if Russia does have advantages, in the grand scheme of things they are not that big.

> They can kick into a true war economy and then become significantly more of a threat. They haven't done so yet because the middle-class population likes their luxury lifestyle (for now).

They did, just in the parts of Russia that are poorer and less-connected (and less powerful politically). They leveraged their huge geographical advantage to spread the pain as much as possible in the regions that don’t matter politically. It is very difficult to see their situation and argue that they are not in a war economy. The middle class in Moscow and St Petersburg are sheltered, true, but still.

> I believe Russia is ramping up to find an excuse at some point to attack a NATO country, but in a way and during a point in time it's difficult for NATO to retaliate.

I don’t think that is likely. But then, of course Trump is making it more and more likely by the day as he insists on getting bogged down in Iran.