My AI Experience in Russia as a European🤯

This is a story about how I built a fully local AI dev setup (and why you should too). Moving to Moscow from the EU felt like a grand adventure, until I tried to open my laptop and actually get some work done. I’m a casual GCP ecosystem user. Nothing fancy, the usual Gemini API, Vertex AI Studio, Antigravity, the occasional Claude call, etc. I had three enterprise clients waiting for custom AI solutions, a handful of personal projects, and the blind confidence that “it’ll just work.” Needless to