Why have the international sanctions, the imposition of which was presumably supposed to bring the Russian economy to an inevitable deep recession, actually failed? Which internal factors determined the resilience of the Russian economy? Which factors will influence its further dynamics? What kind of internal challenges will face Russian business in the future? How sustainable is the model of 'war economy' in Russia? The presentation will answer these questions proceeding from a series of in-depth interviews with heads of firms and representatives of business associations from different industries and regions of the Russian Federation, and using other available data.

Andrei Yakovlev is an economist whose main research interests include political economy of development, state-business relations in Russia, industrial policy, public procurement, and incentives for bureaucracy (with comparative study of Russia and China). From 1993 to 2023 he worked at the HSE (Higher School of Economics) University in Moscow as director of the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies. In 2011-2022 together with Timothy Frye of Columbia University he led HSE's International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID). Since 2006 he has been a member of the Executive Committee of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies (EACES). In 2015-2019 he served as president of the Association of Russian Economic Think Tanks (ARETT). In 2017 he was awarded the Gaidar Prize in economics. In 2022-2023 he was visiting scholar at Davis Center in Harvard and From November 2023 he was a fellow at Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg in Germany.

His recent publications include papers “Career trajectories of regional officials: Russia and China before and after 2012” (Eurasian Geography and Economics, 63(5), 599–624, https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2021.1944247) and “Composition of the ruling elite, incentives for productive usage of rents, and prospects for Russia’s limited access order” (Post-Soviet Affairs, 37(5), 417–434, https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2021.1966988) as well as series of comments at RussiaPost (Will Russian Business be Sacrificed to Build a New Economic Model? (russiapost.info); How to think about a post-Putin future? (russiapost.info); The shift to “centralized corruption” and the effectiveness of the Russian bureaucracy (russiapost.info))