The latest news here in Moscow is that Putin has decreed the country’s elite should not go to this weekend’s Russian Economic Forum in London. The Forum happens every April, and is a merry jamboree where 2000 Russian politicians, CEOs and journalists mingle with British investors, politicians and journalists. It’s perhaps the major social event in Russian business networking.
This year, however, the word has come down from the Kremlin that top politicians and businessmen should not support what a Kremlin source calls “a gathering of emigrants”. Instead, they should go to home-grown conferences such as the St Petersburg Economic Forum, which takes place in June. The Kremlin has long railed against what it calls the “offshore aristocracy” of its business elite, and now it looks like its put its foot down.
The Kremlin has directly forbidden top politicians from going to the Forum and apparently many businessmen also fear the wrath of Putin more than alienating their foreign investors, and have also cancelled their trip west.
It’s a fascinating moment in post-Soviet politics. Many have used the new freedom of travel and of capital movement to shift towards Europe, and especially towards London. And yet the Kremlin is still able to rattle its sabre and stop the elite travelling there for a Forum! Tsarist times…
