Gideon talks to Russia experts Catherine Belton and Arkady Ostrovsky about Vladimir Putin’s goals. They discuss his early ambition to restore Russia’s status as a global superpower. And they go on to analyse why, after a quarter of a century in power, Putin may see his best chance yet of achieving that goal - at a cost of hundreds of thousands of Russian lives. This episode is an edited recording of an event organised by Intelligence Squared that took place in central London earlier this month.

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Presented by Gideon Rachman. Produced by Fiona Symon. Sound design is by Breen Turner.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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