According to Richard A. Werner and Vladimir I. Yakunin Western sanctions may "fail to change" Putin's foreign policies, but they are actually "saving Russia". They believe that if Russia would get its act together, "another economic miracle /may still be/ possible". They urge the Kremlin to go ahead with the "long-waited" structural reform, improve "managerial efficiency" and emulate the "credit-guidance regime used by East Asia's economies - Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China - by creating "higher-value-added domestic industries."

Are they being over-optimistic? Vladimir Yakunin was blacklisted by the US last year over Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He is said to be one of Putin's favourite ideologues - an old friend from the KGB days. As head of the Russian Railways, he ran one of the country's most important, but highly unprofitable companies. He stepped down last August, and his sudden departure prompted speculations about Putin being anxious to bring in younger people to improve the economy.

The authors maintain Putin, despite a shrinking economy, is "more popular than ever". They point out that Russia has its way to prove that the "neoclassical school" - an evolution of the nineteenth-century British classical economics - "emboidied in the so-called "Washington Consensus" is "fundamentally flawed". They say the "laissez-faire" policies that enable free trade and free markets to boost growth, are obsolete, and they highlight several precedents in the Western history of economics to underscore the importance of moving up "the value-added ladder." They warn against relying on the exports of natural resources, and urge for more focus on "technological expertise, and skilled workforce", so Russia could "manufacture the finished products that it previously imported." In several key branches like "engineering, petrochemicals, light industry, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture", they see a productivity increase that replaces imports.

No doubt "Russia has all it needs to thrive" and Yakunin is known for being dismissive of the West's economics, politics, values and structures, however, much attached to its benefits. Both of his sons are said to live in the West - one in London, one in Switzerland - and his grandchildren are growing up there.

Although Yakunin promotes Russian national culture, he had campaigned for new Russian school textbooks that do not teach history from a Western, liberal perspective. Yet according to the anti-corruption campaigner, Alexei Navalny, Yakunin had built himself a palace outside Moscow using foreign limestone and building materials brought in from Germany - a strange mindset for a man preaching a Russian economy independent of the West.