I agree that progress, if any at all, would be slow. President Medvedev recently toured Silicon Valley, opened a Twitter account, and proclaimed Russia "open for business". Unfortunately, with articles like this I don't think he will get many takers. However, I do think such efforts can plant the seeds of improvement better than doing nothing at all. That's why I mentioned a long term view. This article looks at Russia now, today, and we see people even is this thread talk of leaving. But if there were at least honest attempts to change things for the better, maybe people wouldn't be in such a hurry to leave, hurting chances for progress before they even get started.