English is not very widespread in Russia and ex-USSR countries to the south. Even the IT crowd among me knows very little of the language (enough to read an answer on StackOverflow or write a badly worded commit message).

And now I know why it's not being taught more widely, despite the obvious economic advantages this could provide. You don't want the population to be able to speak to their 'enemies' or read news from the other side easily. It's pretty obvious now the mad lunatic has been preparing the country for what's happening for about a decade, and he truly believed when he talked about the 'encirclement' and 'sending nukes to Florida'.