North-west is a self-sustained region: machinery, ageiculture, large port, a 5-mil city you name it. We could live separately and be fine
Russia is called a federation, but in the reality, power of regions were largely taking away. So it is about sending taxes to Moscow and getting shit in return.
People are more "European", before war a large part of more active/younger people were shopping/taking vacations in Finland, going to Estonia, or travel further through those countries. Same with Finns buying stuff in Russia or partying in SPb.
With all the general closeness, I absolutely can see Saint-Petersburg and the region being a separate country with close ties (no-visa, EU member?) with Nordic and Baltic countries.
But I guess it's not happening, and by writing the things above I became a terrorist, "promoting rebellion and dissolution of the Russian state"
"I'm an old man, and I am a trusting person. Best trusting person there is. You gotta trust young people, they are the future of our great country! And this highwayman took advantage of it, he robbed me, he robbed America! And he's the one who took that papers, you'll hear about 'em, not me!"
Yeah, we know that he's away (I'd assume he's not fishing from his backyard, then he is definitely the asshole).
I got heavily downvoted, but just to collect the facts and assumptions:
The kid is not a child, it is an adult who is able to drive.
He (she?) is saying that they're okay, so they are not endangered anymore
Dad is out fishing. And places where people fiah are usually not 5 minutes from home
Mom's car is wrecked - that's the most probable reason to write dad, as he has an "non-wrecked" car
As it's Mom's car that is wrecked, she probably needs to know that, arrive at the spot anyway, because insurance, police, stuff like that. The "child" probably doesn't want to call her because she could be quite upset.
There are taxis.
If mom is at work, I think a wrecked car and a "child" at the roadside is a good enough reason to leave for the day.
Summarizing all that, I don't see how mom is out of the picture where she has one more reason to know about the situation, and how the adult offspring didn't leave home in a taxi.
A child who drives, nice. It looks like it is an adult. And he's saying that he's fine, so from now it's an economical, not a life-saving problem.
"Dad is fishing" sounds like he's more "remote" himself
The market did change in the end of 90s-start of 2000s - before, games were mostly done for "nerds with PCs", because usually only well-off adults had something decent at home. Then, mass adoption of PCs, PS3and XBox, led to age of an average gamer drop to a teenager, for the first time in history. So many games were, in general, "dumbed down". Now we see a great picture of market coming back, and there is a shitton of everything engineering/economics.
I'm not saying that middle schoolers don't deserve to play games - they do, and I did. It's just, for example, WoW's "account bound" and "char bound" stuff wasn't a good thing, but it then became a standard, and started an age of microtransactions (will you argue itcs a bad thing?)
Siberia - easily. "the guys over the mountains" coule live by themselves and get more use of their asian ties, in contrary to working for Moscow.