Western companies have almost universally shunned a self-styled “Russian Davos” event annually headlined by Vladimir Putin, in a stark symbol of Russia’s international isolation more than 15 months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
One former attendee of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) described an invitation to the forum as “totally toxic” and compared it to being asked to join the annual reunion of Spectre, the criminal organisation run by James Bond’s archenemy Ernst Blofeld.
When Putin gives his plenary speech on Friday, the person said, the “most popular seats will be the ones in the back of the room”.
Stands at the event now promote opportunities to invest in territories of east Ukraine that have been occupied by the Russian army. Far-right activists including the philosopher Alexander Dugin have been given time on stage. And foreign visitors who do attend have been urged to bring dollars and euros in cash because of banking prohibitions on foreign credit cards.
Some Russian companies and prominent businessmen are also snubbing the event, as its prestige and networking opportunities have evaporated. They include Yandex, Russia’s largest tech company, as well as a number of well-connected businessmen.
“They think that it’s useless and expensive,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a former central bank official who had written about this year’s forum as a “Potemkin village”. “There are lots of things to do on top of SPIEF, so it’s not worth it to travel to St Petersburg and meet all the people there if it is not profitable for their business.”
Prices to attend or buy a stand at the event were “skyrocketing”, she said, at the same time as foreign delegations and other networking opportunities were disappearing.
One sign of the forum’s diminished state was that Igor Sechin, the chief executive of the state oil company Rosneft, was unable to attract any leading energy figures for his annual session.
“Five years ago, everyone wanted access to SPIEF because everyone was there,” she said. “It was a great opportunity for networking. Right now it’s useless. Who are they going to network with? They can meet each other at government meetings, they can just meet in Moscow.”
An aide to a Russian oligarch not at this year’s forum wrote that his boss “has not been particularly interested in attending [SPIEF] for the last couple of years and wasn’t really planning to go to last year’s either”.
The event is seen as important to Putin, whose presidential administration and security services authorise the prospective guest list for the annual forum months before it takes place, three people confirmed to the Guardian.
Organisers have sought to avoid mentioning Russia’s war against Ukraine, while painting an image of the Russian economy as resistant to sanctions from the west.
Still, the war in Ukraine has loomed large over SPIEF, with speakers promising rewards for destroyed western-made tanks used by Ukrainian armed forces.
To replace western delegations, Russia has courted officials from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, India and China.
Optimists in government admitted the forum was diminished but claimed they could make up for the loss of their relations with the west by focusing on the Middle East and other regions.
“Of course, colleagues say things are different than before, that is obvious,” said an official at a state financial institution, who was attending SPIEF for the second time. “But you have to adapt to the new realities. We have to look for new partners, the UAE is a big focus and we have a lot of meetings with them, discussing new projects and investments. I would say the atmosphere is normal, not very depressing. People don’t talk much about Ukraine.”
But many others, Prokopenko said, believed the forum had become an exercise in self-delusion.
“Psychologically it’s quite difficult to pretend that you can continue business as usual in a country with a hot war in Ukraine and a war with the west,” she said.
This year, a preliminary list of invitees included the Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, the Financial Times reported. But when that list was published, Schmidt and other prominent businesspeople denied they would attend. When Putin makes his annual keynote speech, he will be joined on stage only by the president of Algeria.
The Financial Times has reported that shortly before this year’s forum, Putin signed a confidential decree that gives the government extraordinary powers to buy western assets in the country at a considerable discount, effectively paving the way for nationalisation of foreign companies.
It is a far cry from the forum before 2014, when multinationals and Russian companies would vie for expensive partnerships or hold flashy parties featuring pop stars including Sting to prove they were committed to the Russian market.
“You had to be there to show you were a serious player in the market,” said the former attendee. “You had all of the multinationals falling over themselves to be as visible as possible on the programme, in as many sessions as possible, saying all the right things that Russian government people like to hear. So it was a real competition, everyone had to be there.”
Foreign companies became more cautious after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the person said, but continued to try to be “as visible as possible for the Russians, and as invisible as possible for the westerners”.
But since the outbreak of the war, he said, any western interest dried up, and many Russians come just to show they are not skipping the event. “Now, they’re just there to check the boxes,” the former attendee said.
