Russia has already lost a good number of years, due to the opposition of the authorities towards crypto. This is tragic, because many of the best crypto developers are Russians and many of them had to emigrate to other countries during the past few years. Many of the crypto ventures also had to shift their operations outside Russia.
This is the truth. They didn't recognize it in the early phase, look Buterin and other examples.
But other countries missed the early phase too. Russia will catch up if they do things aggressively.