Putin’s ‘Davos’ haunted by war and stagnation despite swank of influencers

St Petersburg, Russia: A right-wing US influencer, a serving US official and a German retail billionaire are due to attend President Vladimir Putin’s “Russian Davos” on Wednesday as the Kremlin grapples with stalled growth and a confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war.

Russia’s premier investment forum, the fifth since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, opens just hours after a deadly drone and missile attack on Kyiv, which Russia said was in response to a deadly attack on a dormitory in Russian-controlled Luhansk.

Shunned by the West since the 2022 invasion, this year’s forum will include Rodney Mims Cook Jr, chairman of the US Commission of Fine Arts, who oversees President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom extension, right-wing influencer Candace Owens and, possibly, internet personality Andrew Tate.

The Kremlin said this would be the first such Russian investment conference with US participation since 2017–2018.

The war looms large even if Ukraine is not mentioned once in the official program.

“The question is: does this war end or do we stare into a much tougher future?” one Russian participant told Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the matter’s sensitivity.

Putin, Russia’s paramount leader as either president or prime minister since 1999, presided over a massive jump in prosperity in his first 15 years. The economy grew tenfold to about $US2.3 trillion ($3.2 trillion) in 2013, the year before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, according to International Monetary Fund data.

Since then, Russia’s economy has paid the price for the confrontation with the West over Ukraine: despite better-than-expected growth in 2023 and 2024, it is projected at around $US2.9 trillion this year, a fraction of the combined economic might of the $US45 trillion NATO alliance, according to Russian state data.

Russia’s commodity-dependent economy slowed sharply to about 1 per cent growth last year from 4.9 per cent in 2024, and shrank by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, which officials blamed on high interest rates, Western sanctions and a strong rouble. Growth is now forecast at a modest 0.4 per cent this year.

Oleg Vyugin, a former deputy chairman of the central bank, told Reuters that Russia had a choice between a recession or reducing financing for what the Kremlin calls the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine.

“Russia is faced with a choice between reducing military financing, which will give the economy an incentive to grow by reducing the key interest rate more quickly, expanding lending to the civilian sector, part