Russia has rock solid fundamentals and some of the best macroeconomic numbers in the world as part of president Vladimir Putin’s efforts to build a financial fortress to insulate Russia from western sanctions. But at the same time real incomes have been stagnant for six years, the propensity to protest is up and the population is depressed.

Is Russia in a good place or a bad place? What will win out: the improving business or the deteriorating geopolitical relations with the developed world? Does Putin even have an ideology? It started with a weak hand but Putin has masterfully played on the chinks in the west’s armour.

bne IntelliNews editor-in-chief Ben Aris talks to Sean Guillory, Digital Scholarship Curator in the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and host of the SRB Podcast about where Russia is in the European context and how Russia’s relations with the rest of the world will work out.

Sean Guillory, Digital Scholarship Curator in the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and host of the SRB Podcast

Ben Aris, editor-in-chief,bne IntelliNews