In terms of corruption, violence, risk of doing business, high disease rates, and in many other ways, Russia is very much like Africa. Scan the global maps for different rankings, and note the many similarities between Africa and Russia.
World Risk Map
Global Competitiveness
One Measure of a Government’s Potential Longevity
HIV Prevalence Rates
Global Murder Rate
Global Peace Index
Corruption
Freedom of the Press
Political Violence and Conflict
Risk
In many ways Russia is like a third world country. Worse, it is like an African third world country.
In former centuries, Russians were a greater people than they are under Putin’s mafia rule. They were able to achieve control over large areas of land — and were able to produce enough strong and hardy people to manage the land. In the new era of mafia control, ethnic Russians are fading and being replaced by Central Asians of the Muslim persuasian.
That is one way at least that Russia does not resemble African nations: African nations are likely to double in population over the next several decades, whereas ethnic Russian populations are likely to halve in size.
Perhaps that is why some Russians want to import large numbers of males from India in an attempt to rejuvenate the Russian spirit with some foreign stock. Soon, those same Russians may decide to import large numbers of African males to assist in this re-birth of a newer, more procreative Russia.
If so, some things would change in Russia, but many things would stay the same. Time will tell.
al fin next level 
On a related topic, I wonder if the birth rates of Whites and East Asians could probably be raised if it was legal to produce children for sale to childless or child wanting couples who could provide loving homes. Many see this as “immoral” but it seems like the free market provides so much that is desirable so perhaps the ability to bare and sell desirable children could greatly improve numbers.
Woops, I meant to leave the above comment in the section on black criminality and not the peace on Russia Vs. Africa.
As a Finnish American I find the religion of latter-day Russophilia very difficult to take in the quotidian round. So I am especially grateful for this posting.
I am one of the people who believes that the extended world war of the 20th century (lasting from 1914 to 1945) did terrible harm to the “white” race or races. While in Europe and the US the flower of youth (as they called it) was selected for military service, and so many millions dead or injured, in Russia the hemoclysm was much wider and deeper in both IQ and numbers. I have no idea how to parse all this, it’s more like a hunch. But the vision of Putin’s Russia as a nationalist paradise where “Caucasians” can get away from corruption, racial conflict, disease, crime, and social control seems widespread these days.
Whether this all has to do with the Hajnal Line or whatnot, I cannot begin to say. But on every one of these maps, it’s very easy to find where the eastern border of Finland was redrawn, dumping more of Finland into USSR hands. My family has its roots there.
http://www.genealogia.fi/emi/art/article255e.htm