Actually, aggregate GDP in PPP terms is also irrelevant. If you want to be serious, you should use several other datapoints: for example, GDP per capita, territorial size, energy consumption, industrial indicators, and population. According to basic economic theory, the only economic concepts that matter are related to individual preferences and, thus, GDP per capita in PPP terms is a good summary statistic of the size of a typical person's budget set, and therefore are a good indicator of the general level of prosperity in a society. In these terms, Russian GDP per capita is about 50-55% of the US's, while the UK's GDP per capita is about 70-75%. Thus, it is true that the UK is a bit richer society than the Russian with a 40% larger GDP per capita. This difference is amplified if you consider that the Russians work more hours, thus the gap in output per hour worked is a bit larger than the gap in GDP per capita, with British output per hour worked being perhaps 60-70% higher. However, the Russian economy is based on material industries while the British is a services economy: Russian industrial value added is 30% of GDP while the British is 16.5%. In addition, as Russia is 2.4 times larger in demographic size and 70 times larger in geographical size, it is a much larger industrial and natural resource power than Britain today. Some comparative industrial indicators illustrate the substantial differences in material resource output between the two economies: Oil production (thousand barrels per day 2025) Russia - 10,027 Britain - 565 Steel production (million tonnes per year 2023) Russia - 76.0 Britain - 5.6 Cement production (million tonnes per year 2023) Russia - 57.0 Britain - 7.9 Co2 emissions (million tonnes per year 2023) Russia - 2,069.50 Britain - 302.10 Coal output (million tonnes per year 2024) Russia - 476.2 Britain - 2.6 Motor vehicles (units 2021, before the Ukraine war caused manufacturing reallocations in Russia) Russia - 1,566,317 Britain - 932,488 Electricity generation (TWh): Russia - 1,192.8 Britain - 292.3 Thus, it is quite obvious that as a nation, Russia has enormous advantages in terms of material resource supply over Britain. Considering the discrepancy in demographic size and natural resource endowments, this helps to explains why Russia is considered a great power while Britain is regarded as a middle power. By the way, if you look at such statistics up to around 1930, when Britain was still considered a great power, it had a substantial lead over Russia in nearly all of these indicators.