Recently, the Intergovernmental Economic Forum was held in St. Petersburg, Russia.
It was marked by several interesting events that are quite indicative of modern Russia.
First, Putin once again took the opportunity to use his favorite trick – to combine yet another threat of nuclear weapons against Europe with declarations of Russia’s peacefulness. During one of his speeches, he said that he did not rule out changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, in particular in terms of testing. He also boasted that the Russian army does not need to use tactical nuclear weapons to achieve success against Ukraine. At the same time, he reminded us that Russia has far more nuclear weapons than European countries combined, and noted that in his opinion Europe is defenseless to a possible nuclear strike because it has no early warning system.
Meanwhile, during a meeting with journalists, Putin rudely rejected any accusations of aggressiveness and denied that Russia was threatening anyone with nuclear weapons (apparently forgetting his own statement a few days earlier about “European countries with high population density having to be afraid”).
The conversation with the press, instead of a dialogue, traditionally turned into a monologue by Putin, in which he once again repeated his favorite disinformation narratives about the “coup d’état in Kyiv,” “protecting the people of Donbas,” and “Russia being forced to defend itself and therefore launching the so-called Special Military Operation in Ukraine.”
There was nothing new in these statements. But what was new (and not very pleasant) it’s the absolute tolerance of these statements by journalists, including international ones. None of those present dared to cite the real facts or ask any questions. It was somewhat reminiscent of an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, which also turned into a several-hour “one-man show.”
The status of the forum was also interesting, as it is officially called an international forum, which means that foreign delegations are expected to participate.
One such delegation was a group of Taliban representatives from Afghanistan. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariya Zakharova called the goals of this pragmatic, as without contacts with the real power in Afghanistan, many problems cannot be solved. An interesting nuance here is that even Russia itself officially recognizes the Taliban as an extremist terrorist organization (despite numerous promises to cancel this status). This is the best illustration of the expression “tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are.” This fact also correlates with the recent news that Russian intelligence allegedly provided information to Hamas to prepare the October 7, 2023 attack. If you add friendship with Iran and North Korea, you get a very accurate portrait of today’s “peace-loving” Russia. A rogue country that only contacts extremist dictators and threatens the rest of the world with nuclear weapons In terms of economic news, it was not the news about the growth of the Russian industry (at least according to the never lying Russian statistics) that received the most attention, but the news about escort girls. As it turned out, almost all elite escort girls were attracted to the forum to play “common visitors”, which caused a significant shortage in the market of escort services. At the same time, it was reported that for one day of “participation in the forum” they earn fr
