A country so full of unique perspectives, amazing engineers

I can easily see where the "thoughtful writers" impression came from, but what about those two? What kinds of perspective do you see coming from Russia? I can only presume that you mean the space travelling possibilities when you talk about the engineers - is there anything else of note in the field of Russian engineering?

hasn't made the huge positive impact on the world I think we in Europe all hoped for when the soviet order started to collapse

What did you hope for? What was the general sentiment about Russia around that time?

Instead it has crept back into itself and reverted to a statist controlled Orwellian bloc

I'm still in quite a bit of disbelief about the dystopian state of Russia that I've noticed a few years ago. "It can't be that bad", I thought when I wrote a post about it in one of the Russian social networks, "There must be something good". And, sure, there is: water, food, heating (not everywhere, but hey), sewage system, public transportation, education... But, the more I hear about Russia, the less I think of the country, perspectives-wise. Someone in the thread told me about Russia dealing with North Korea, of all places; I never heard of it, and it shocked me to learn this.

I think the core of it is Russia's leadership sees international diplomacy as a zero-sum game, rather than forums to find win-win solutions.

Do you have any example you can explain to me in simple terms? I'm not up to the par regarding politics but would like to learn of the course of the country I was born in.