by Guy Faulconbridge and Vladimir Soldatkin
On one side there are those who advocate the continuation of the war in Ukraine and urge the Kremlin to prepare for a long confrontation with the West. On the other hand, those who emphasize the benefits that peace could bring to the economy.
Dear to the heart of President Vladimir Putin, the St. Petersburg economic forum, nicknamed the “Russian Davos”, which opened its doors on Wednesday in a sky blackened by columns of smoke caused by a Ukrainian drone attack on a nearby naval base and refinery, reflects the debate on the future of the country which agitates the political and economic elites behind the scenes.
More than four years after the start of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, the deputy chief of staff of the presidency Maxim Oreshkin told the conference that it would be vain to hope for a return to the status quo ante such as a lifting of Western sanctions against Moscow.
“We should not expect things to change, that something will come back. It will not come back and nothing will change,” declared the president’s economic adviser.
Signs of slowing down in the Russian economy are prompting some members of the elite to advocate for the conclusion of a peace agreement through the mediation of the United States.
“The question is: will this war end or do we face a much more difficult future?” asks one participant, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject.
WAR AS A HORIZON?
Nationalists, for their part, see the “special operation” in Ukraine as the first phase of a global confrontation with what they consider to be a declining West.
“We must understand that we will be at war in the coming years, even for around twenty years (…) and we must learn to live with this war,” assured, to the applause of a packed room, the former spy Andreï Bezroukov, arrested by the FBI in 2010 while he was living under a false identity in the United States.
Russia, nationalists say, must pull itself together or risk collapse and destruction, by improving its decision-making, developing technological innovations or changing the perception of the army within society.
In the pavilions of the SPIEF (Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum), once frequented by Western financiers, there are drones and weapons or cyber security companies promoting facial recognition tools and cyber defense programs using artificial intelligence.
Ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, whose daughter Daria was killed in 2022 in a car bombing that Moscow blamed on Ukraine, said the war in Ukraine will end with a Russian victory or “never end.”
“We need to gather all our strength, all our will and stop pretending that we are a peaceful country that gathers for barbecues and goes on vacation in the summer,” he said. Russia will not attack the West, added Alexander Dugin. But, when asked about future relations between the West and Moscow, he had only one word: “War”.
(Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French version, edited by Sophie Louet)
