Unicorns and foreign agents: Kremlin puts on investment show amid crackdown

The St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia’s primary investor event, opened on Thursday to the usual fanfare of overweight executives, siliconed escorts, and exotic-sounding breakout sessions.

The “world’s largest post-pandemic meeting” offered a flavour to suit every suit: from “Russian investment unicorns” to “Fighting Covid” and “Connecting Our Brains to Computers”.

But starting it all was a session devoted to the Kremlin’s controversial new media policies, hosted by the Russian foreign ministry’s Maria Zakharova. The assertive spokesperson, hardly known for subtlety, titled her session right on brand: "Foreign Media Agents in Russia.”

Zakharova’s straightforwardness mostly ended there, as she proceeded to deliver a hyperrealistic defence of the clampdown. The US had applied "foreign agent" regulations on Russian media, she claimed, so the Kremlin was simply doing the same to media funded from abroad in Russia.

"Our western partners have left us with no choice," she said. "Our media laws are much more liberal than the western analogues."

The dubiousness of such claims was underlined with news, delivered just an hour before, that yet another independent outlet had been forced to close under the weight of the new laws. VTimes, a small internet publication resurrected from the ashes of another independent newspaper, was declared a "foreign agent" on 14 May.

It said it could no longer operate given the fears of potential advertisers and threats of arrest.

“We studied seven scenarios of continuing, but each of the scenarios carried a risk that our employees would be prosecuted or even jailed,” publisher Alexander Gubsky said in a letter sent to local editors. “Our own experience has convinced us that the Kremlin does not need professional and uncontrolled media.”

Zakharova, surrounded by representatives of state media and handpicked sympathetic foreign correspondents, was unrepentant. She claimed not to have heard of the publication. “Their sponsors have left them?” she asked in a mocking tone. “Perhaps you should speak to the sponsors about why they don’t want to finance them.”

The three-day investor forum has in recent years acted as a mirror on Russia’s growing international isolationism.

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In the late 2000s, when financial opportunities appeared boundless, hundreds of leaders and top executives made the annual trip to Russia’s northern capital. A major shift occurred in the post-Crimea reality of 2014, when western governments urged their businessmen not to attend. This year’s parsed-down, Covid-era event is largely limited to Russian specialists. Vladimir Putin is due to give the keynote speech on Friday, with Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz joining, but only by video link.

All the same, the residue of state-sponsored glamour contrasted wildly with the grimmer reality outside. Politics in Russia have sped up to lightning speed with the August poisoning, January return and February jailing of Putin’s primary nemesis Alexei Navalny – almost to the point of it becoming impossible to track.

As difficult as a list may be, here are just some of landmarks from the last three months: over one hundred new criminal cases against opponents of the Kremlin; Raids, arrests and jailing of leading journalists, including veteran editor Sergei Smirnov; New prosecutions against Navalny and all of his close entourage; The criminalisation of his organisations; The arrest of the father of close Navalny colleague Ivan Zhdanov; Attacks on social media, including threatening to cut off Twitter; The jailing of leading opposition lawyer Ivan Pavlov; The classification of several troublesome independent media as "foreign agents" (putting their entire future at risk.)

The Kremlin continued its crackdown on the eve of the forum with the arrest of another two prominent opponents. In St Petersburg, they turned around a plane carrying journalist and activist Andrei Pivovarov as it was taxiing for takeoff. He was charged with cooperating with an “undesirable organisation”. In Moscow, they detained the moderate opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov on what appear to be trumped-up fraud charges.

Gudkov, a former Duma deputy, had hinted he intended to run in the upcoming September parliamentary elections. He may well have beaten the Kremlin candidates. But the special operation conducted against him at his family datcha – which involved hundreds of armed officers and dozens of vehicles – appears to have been as much directed against his father, Gennady Gudkov.

The elder Gudkov, a former KGB operative turned liberal politician, has been especially open in his criticism of the Kremlin.

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Speaking with The Independent from exile in Bulgaria, Gennady says his son has fallen victim to a political storm engulfing Russia. The writing was already on the wall with the poisoning of Navalny, he says, but changes were now coming quick and fast.

"We are seeing a totalitarian dictatorship forming in front of our very eyes," he says. "Political opposition banned, civil society banned, the total purge of anyone and anything standing in the way of the Kremlin."

Gudkov says he has little time for the few investors who had made their way to St Petersburg.

"The political risks are enormous and anyone putting up their money should understand it is likely to be taken from them in a flash," he says.

"Only a mad person would invest in Russia at the moment. Let that be the forum’s tagline.”