SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
St Petersburg, Russia: A right-wing US influencer, a serving US official and a German retail billionaire are due to attend President Vladimir Putin’s “Russian Davos” on Wednesday as the Kremlin grapples with stalled growth and a confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war.
Russia’s premier investment forum, the fifth since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, opens just hours after a deadly drone and missile attack on Kyiv, which Russia said was in response to a deadly attack on a dormitory in Russian-controlled Luhansk.
Shunned by the West since the 2022 invasion, this year’s forum will include Rodney Mims Cook Jr, chairman of the US Commission of Fine Arts, who oversees President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom extension, right-wing influencer Candace Owens and, possibly, internet personality Andrew Tate.
The Kremlin said this would be the first such Russian investment conference with US participation since 2017–2018.
The war looms large even if Ukraine is not mentioned once in the official program.
“The question is: does this war end or do we stare into a much tougher future?” one Russian participant told Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the matter’s sensitivity.
Putin, Russia’s paramount leader as either president or prime minister since 1999, presided over a massive jump in prosperity in his first 15 years. The economy grew tenfold to about $US2.3 trillion ($3.2 trillion) in 2013, the year before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, according to International Monetary Fund data.
Since then, Russia’s economy has paid the price for the confrontation with the West over Ukraine: despite better-than-expected growth in 2023 and 2024, it is projected at around $US2.9 trillion this year, a fraction of the combined economic might of the $US45 trillion NATO alliance, according to Russian state data.
Russia’s commodity-dependent economy slowed sharply to about 1 per cent growth last year from 4.9 per cent in 2024, and shrank by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, which officials blamed on high interest rates, Western sanctions and a strong rouble. Growth is now forecast at a modest 0.4 per cent this year.
War, spies and oil
Oleg Vyugin, a former deputy chairman of the central bank, told Reuters that Russia had a choice between a recession or reducing financing for what the Kremlin calls the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine.
“Russia is faced with a choice between reducing military financing, which will give the economy an incentive to grow by reducing the key interest rate more quickly, expanding lending to the civilian sector, partially lifting sanctions and restoring logistics chains, and continuing the SMO, which will constantly require increased spending and further tax increases, intensifying the economic slide into recession, and a decline in real incomes,” Vyugin said.
At the conference, whose theme is “Pragmatic Dialogue: the Path to a Stable Future”, attendees at the heavily guarded conference centre outside Putin’s hometown will rub shoulders with Russian billionaires and even some former intelligence officers over debates ranging from OPEC+ to the use of AI in information wars.
German retail billionaire Thomas Bruch, owner of Hyperglobus, is also listed as attending a discussion on investment from Germany, which was once Russia’s largest single trading partner. The forum said 1800 German companies continue to operate in Russia.
“Thomas Bruch is attending the Economic Forum in St Petersburg in his capacity as a shareholder in the Russian hypermarkets,” Globus Holding said. “The purpose of his attendance is to foster business contacts and engage in discussions with representatives from the business community and various institutions.”
Globus Holding noted that it focuses exclusively on its business in Germany and the Czech Republic and has divested its entire stake in the Russian food market.
Putin’s guest list
Some of the most prominent attendees this year are from Saudi Arabia, including Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who is due to discuss the impact of the war in the Middle East on energy and the future of OPEC+ with Putin’s oil tsar, Alexander Novak and OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais.
Among the US citizens due to attend the forum are:
Candace Owens
Right-wing American social media influencer and podcaster who has been fiercely critical of Israel, US funding of Israel, feminism and much else. French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte are pursuing a high-profile defamation lawsuit against Owens, 37, who has falsely claimed that Brigitte was born male.
Owens will speak at a session on “balancing parenthood in a large family with a successful career,” according to the official program.
“I have been wanting to go to St Petersburg for a very, very long time, just as a Christian in general, just to see some of those cathedrals and churches,” Owens said ahead of her trip.
Steven Seagal
Former Hollywood action hero and martial arts expert, Seagal has long admired Putin, from whom he received a Russian passport in 2016. Seagal is a special representative of Russia’s Foreign Ministry for humanitarian ties with the United States and Japan.
A frequent visitor to Russia, Seagal backed Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 as “very reasonable”, joined a pro-Kremlin party in 2021, and has supported Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Seagal is listed as a participant in a panel on culture.
Rodney Mims Cook Jr.
Chairman of the US Commission of Fine Arts, Cook is overseeing US President Donald Trump’s controversial White House ballroom extension and is listed as leading the official US delegation to the forum.
He is the first US official to attend the forum since 2017-18, according to the Kremlin, and the first since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022. He will speak at a session on US-Russian cultural dialogue.
Cook told Russia’s TASS state news agency ahead of the forum that he was representing the US as a minister of culture and as a Christian, not as a politician. He said he had helped restore various churches in Russia in the past, and on Tuesday, he gifted a religious icon to a male monastery in St Petersburg.
Andrew and Tristan Tate (TBC)
Andrew Tate posted a video of him and his brother receiving a musical Russian welcome at the airport in Moscow on the eve of the forum. But the brothers – who like to keep their followers guessing – have yet to confirm their attendance.
They have been under criminal investigation in Romania on charges, including human trafficking, since December 2022, but the two probes have yet to make it to trial. They also face charges in the UK, including rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking. They have denied all wrongdoing.
The brothers are both former kickboxers with dual US and British citizenship. Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist, has gained millions of online fans by promoting an ultra-masculine lifestyle that critics say involves denigrating women.
Reuters
