‘Optimistic scenario is departure of Vladimir Putin’

When Russian economist Sergei Guriev and The Conversation sat down to speak on the morning of February 16, the news of the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny hadn’t yet broken. In fact, we discussed how the international community could best protect Guriev‘simprisoned friend.

Guriev has since described Navalny’s death, decried by the West as a political assassination orchestrated by Kremlin, as “terrible news – not only for the future of Russia, but also for Ukraine, Europe and the entire free world.”

He also endorsed Yulia Navalnaya as a “strong and independent leader” on Twitter days after the opposition leader’s widow – herself a trained economist – announced that she would be taking up her husband’s mantle.

Our Q&A, which focuses on the state of the Russian economy almost two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, remains more relevant than ever, as the West begins to unleash a new wave of sanctions in response to Navalny’s alleged murder.

One of Russia’s most prominent economists, Guriev was once a linchpin of the government of Dmitri Medvedev (2008-2012), writing speeches for the president and serving on the boards of many state companies.

He fled Russia in 2013, because of fears for his freedom after co-authoring a report critical of the treatment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a then-imprisoned oil tycoon at the centre of the Yukos affair.

Guriev is now a professor of economics and the provost of Sciences Po Paris, and has just been named dean of the London Business School – news that prompted Navalny to offer his congratulations from his cell in the Arctic penal colony.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Guriev has also been one of the leading minds behind Western sanctions on his country through his work