The "Eastern Economic Forum" has been held every year since 2015 in Vladivostok, in the far east of Russia.

It is intended to attract investors, especially from the Asia-Pacific region, to Russia and was not created by chance a year after the start of Russian aggression in Ukraine: The forum is part of the "turn to the east" propagated by the Kremlin, the search for new business partners, which has already led to an increase in China's share of trade with Russia, but the most important trading partner is still the EU.

Katharina Wagner

Business correspondent for Russia and the CIS based in Moscow.

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Unlike in previous years, there were hardly any promises about major investments in Vladivostok this time: Only India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced via video that India wanted to help Russia expand the Northeast Passage through the Arctic Ocean - thanks to global warming, it should be an alternative to the southern route through the Suez Canal will.

The Indian shipyard Mazagon Dock Limited will build one of the most important merchant ships in the world together with the Russian shipyard Zvezda, according to Modi.

In contrast, no such offers came from China;

In 2018, President Xi Jinping had promised to help build industrial capacities in the Far East.

This year, Xi only spoke about the coronavirus in a video message.

The main message: Nord Stream 2

Trade relations with Japan did not play a major role either.

They have long been hampered by a dispute over the Kuril Islands, a group of islands in the Pacific that the Soviet Union occupied in 1945.

Moscow and Tokyo have therefore still not signed a peace treaty since World War II.

Putin has now announced that he wants to set up a special economic zone on the islands in which foreign entrepreneurs will not have to pay taxes for ten years.

Apparently Japanese investors are also to be attracted in this way.

However, only a few are likely to get involved - because of the dispute over the islands, but also because Japan has joined the Western sanctions against Russia.

The most important message of the forum for Russia's economy was not announced by a foreign head of state, but by Alexei Miller, head of the state gas company Gazprom: "Very soon" the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is to be expected, Miller said in Vladivostok.

He had previously announced that Gazprom would be able to deliver the first gas via the pipeline to Europe “this year”.

However, once the pipeline is complete, it still has to be certified;

In addition, according to EU rules, third parties must also have access to the pipeline, which has not yet been planned as Gazprom has an export monopoly on gas.

In Vladivostok it became known that the government is currently examining whether to allow the state-controlled oil company Rosneft to export gas to Europe.