It's absolutely incredible to me that people are still parroting this 4 years into the war. GDP is not a measure of real economy, and in terms of productive economy Russia is very clearly far ahead of the collective west as evidenced by the fact that it's outproducing all of NATO militarily right now. Vast majority of western economies are now ephemeral things like the service industry and the AI bubble which don't produce anything of tangible value.

GDP is not an actual measure of industrial productivity. Europe and the US are utterly dominated by finance capital, they are hollow shells when it comes to industrialization and as a consequence their economies are dying out as imperialism and neocolonialism become less profitable for them.