He’s not dumb. He’s got a mathematical mind, but his mentality is pretty Soviet. He has this silly idea of fairness. If someone makes a lot of money, then you have to take it away. It’s a bit like China for my tastes,” a former senior Kremlin official said.
This reads like bad parody or satire.
That would indeed be bad. Because we all know how the modern Russian Federation absolutely dwarfs the People's Republic economically.