Russia may be backward comparing to US, Europe, Japan and a few Asian tiger economies, but is it still backyard when it is compared to Latin America, Middle East, or Africa, I don't think so, at the very least, Russia's education system has produced some of the world best engineers, Russia can put human into space, Russia has many billionaires, and Russian living standards are better than most REAL poor countries, is Russia far from realizing its full potential, absolutely, is Russia particularly backyard? Absolutely not, you know, US and EU citizens are not the whole world, there are billions of people who will be absolutely thrilled have they been asked to live in Russia.