The real tragedy is that Russia actually has SO MUCH potential.

They also have major limitations as well.

1. Europe: Their trade with EU is limited due to historic reasons. Colonial rivalries, then the cold war, etc. You can't compare US/Canada to Russia/EU. The EU is russia's largest trading partner but they only do a third of the trade between the US-Canada for many reasons. Canada is content on being a sidekick to the US and being a commodity provider to the US. Hell Canada doesn't really even qualify as a real country. It was pass on from britain to the US. Russia views itself as a first-rate power.

2. China: Common sense says that china and russia are made for each other just like the US/canada. China is a resource consumer and russia has tons of resources. But the US-Canada do about $632 billion in trade per year. Russia-China do about $89 billion. Why is that? Because russia in the past force china to cede a huge chunk of territory and russia and china have had wars/skirmishes/etc throughout history. Neither side trusts each other. So russia essentially missed china's economic boom of the past 30 years or so. That's why the russian far east is continuing to be depopulated. Nobody wants to live there before there aren't any economic potential.

3. Japan: Common sense, once again, says that japan and russia are made for each other. Japan is one of the largest economies in the third and one of the most resource-poor nations on earth. Common sense says that the russians could have gotten wealthy feeding japan's economy. Unfortunately, after ww2, russia took a few islands from japan and never gave them back. So japan and russia's trade relations cannot be fully realized due to a few tiny barren islands.

4: South Korea: The sino-soviet baby north korea gets in the way of south korea and russia fully realizing their trade potential. South korea and Russia want to connect each other via oil/gas pipelines, railroads, etc but north korea is in the way.

5: Turkey: There are historical animosity between the turks and russians that limits their trade potential. Also, turkey's desire to join the EU gets in the way of turkey fully embracing russian trade.

So on and so forth. Russia's biggest asset is their huge landmass and the resources in that landmass. Unfortunately, conquering all that land means that the russians stole a shitload of land from everyone else. So russia has strained relations with EVERYBODY. Crimea isn't an anomaly. The russians annexed shitload of land from everyone. The russians took land from the germans to the japanese and everyone in between. It's how they became the largest nation on earth.

It has so much history and culture,

That's debatable... A lot of their culture was taken from europe, mongols, turks, etc. And their history isn't that deep or unique. We aren't talking about rome, britain, china, ottomans, persians, etc. Besides, tourism isn't going to save russia. Russia is too big for tourism to make a dent in their economy.

Estimates of Putin's wealth are 80B$.

"Estimates". You mean propagandists who hate putin made outlandish claims. Do you believe obama was born in kenya also?

Russia has a lot of positives, but they have even more negatives. Russia is in a tough spot. A lot of it their own doing.