At the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum, which Russia likes to portray as its “answer to Davos”, politics traditionally hardly plays a role.

At least in the public part.

What is really important happens behind the scenes.

Two years ago everyone was talking about the American investor Michael Calvey, who had been arrested a few months earlier in Moscow on dubious allegations of fraud.

Calvey is now free after a long period of house arrest, but the trial against him has not yet ended.

Katharina Wagner

Business correspondent for Russia and the CIS based in Moscow.

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    For other reasons, Russia has not become more attractive to Western investors since then: political relations with the West have hit a new low following hacker attacks, the poison attack on Alexei Navalnyj and a wave of repression by the Kremlin against its critics;

    Now there is also Moscow's support for Belarus after the Ryanair forced landing.

    Politics is ignored

    But these topics do not play a role on the "Spief", as the forum is abbreviated. Neither behind the scenes, as participants report, nor in the public part. The German business delegation does not mention Russia’s aggression at all. In a discussion on the future of energy relations, German managers instead portray Western politics as an annoying brake that needs to be solved: Uniper's CEO, Klaus-Dieter Maubach, emphasizes the good cooperation between Russia and Germany and says that they are in the will "work just as well" for the next 50 years. Like many other speakers, Maubach is in favor of including Russia in the German hydrogen strategy. Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch says,one must let the joint projects with Russia become a reality, "otherwise we will leave it to politics". Mario Mehren, CEO of Wintershall, quotes surveys according to which two thirds of Germans are in favor of cooperation on energy issues with Russia, as well as the commissioning of the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline.

    In his speech on Friday, President Vladimir Putin also used Nord Stream 2 as an example of how Russia's international projects are progressing: On Friday, the laying of the pipes for the first of two strands of the pipeline was finished, and gas could come from the Russian side in about 10 days flow through - now everything depends on Germany, claims Putin. Russia would be happy to carry out projects with “our European partners”, for which the “artificial barriers of the current political economy” would have to be overcome. However, Western direct investment in Russia has plummeted, and several large corporations have withdrawn completely. Even on the "Spief" the number of American and European top managers was only a shadow of earlier years; larger delegations came from the host country Qatar,from China and the Middle East. Whereas in 2019 China's head of state Xi Jinping appeared with Putin at the general assembly of the forum, only the emir of Qatar and Austria's chancellor Sebastian Kurz were connected by video; Only Left Party politician Klaus Ernst had traveled from Germany.

    Putin criticizes the EU and ignores his own vaccination progress

    Putin also indirectly complained that the Russian vaccine Sputnik, which he called the "safest and most effective", was not yet approved everywhere. That looks like the “unwillingness to protect one's own citizens from a threat”. The EU, whose drug authority Sputnik is currently reviewing, has pointed out several times that the Russian manufacturers did not provide sufficient data, which is delaying the process. Putin also announced that more opportunities should be created for vaccination tourists, but did not mention that in Russia itself only 17 million people, or just under 12 percent of the population, have received at least one of two vaccine doses. This is due to mistrust and stagnating production capacities;at the same time, according to the media, Russia had exported more than 16 million doses of vaccine by the end of May.

    Since there are hardly any restrictions against the pandemic in Russia, the already high number of infections is now increasing again. On the "Spief", which is based on PCR tests for participants and has limited the number to 5,000, parties and concerts take place in the evening, and most of the audience sit without masks - among them the chairman of the supervisory board of the state-controlled oil company Rosneft and earlier Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.