During his early years in the Kremlin, President Vladimir V. Putin used the annual economic conference in St. Petersburg as a marquee event to showcase how Russia was becoming a magnet for Western businesses.
Multibillion-dollar oil and gas deals were signed, including the agreement to build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany. Western corporate giants such as BP, Chevron, Deutsche Bank and Total sent their chief executives. In 2018, President Emmanuel Macron of France was the guest of honor. In 2011, Sting performed in front of the Winter Palace.
But the event, which opened on Wednesday and will run through Saturday, now reflects a Russia fundamentally transformed by Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Kingdom of Bahrain was the guest of honor, and the Chinese brand Tank, not Mercedes, was selected as the official car. Instead of executives from Morgan Stanley and Citibank, a delegation of the Taliban roamed the giant exhibition center. And only second-tier Russian pop and rock stars were on show, with no international acts appearing at all.
The conference’s message is that Russia will never again be so reliant on business with the West.
Despite newly opened lines of communication between Mr. Putin and President Trump, major American investors once again shunned the conference. The Russia-United States session, billed as dedicated to “identifying shared interests and shaping long-term partnerships,” was open by invitation only.
Kirill Dmitriev, who has been acting as the Kremlin’s point man in negotiations with the White House, said in an interview that Russia “cannot be dependent on the West” but that “there should be some balance.”
Mr. Dmitriev noted that more than 70 American representatives were present at the conference in St. Petersburg but that many did not make their participation public because “Biden made Russia look scary,” referring to former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Dmitriev added that he expected “real results” of the renewed Russian-U.S. dialogue would appear “by the end of the year,” on the assumption that some progress over the Russia-Ukraine conflict needed to be achieved first. It is likely that American energy companies would be first to come back to the Russian market, Mr. Dmitriev said.
But some Russian business leaders on Wednesday said they would not be thrilled to see the return of their American counterparts.
Oleg Paroyev, director general of Vkusno i Tochka, a fast-food chain that replaced McDonald’s after it exited Russia in 2022, made it clear that he did not want the golden arches to come back.
“Some people believe that sanctions would get lifted one day, and things will go back to what they were like before,” he said at a panel on Wednesday. “We don’t believe that things will go back, they will be different.”
Instead of waiting for Western companies to return, Russian businesses “must build something in Russia,” he said.
Ever since Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin spoke on the telephone in February — the first call between Russian and American leaders since the Ukraine invasion — many Russians have been expecting that some sanctions will soon be lifted and that Western companies will filter back.
With only Chinese models and Russian-made Ladas widely available on the market, some Russians, experts say, have delayed buying a new car, expecting that European or Japanese producers will restart deliveries. The ruble jumped against the dollar by almost 40 percent at the time of the Trump-Putin call, largely reflecting hope of sanctions relief.
But so far, no sanctions have been lifted and not a single Western company has returned.
And while Russia has responded to Western efforts to isolate it by pivoting toward China and to a lesser extent toward India and the Arab monarchies of the Middle East, business leaders from those regions were largely absent from the conference, too.
Mikhail Oseyevsky, president of Rostelecom, Russia’s state-controlled telecommunications company, said at the panel that the increased presence of Chinese goods in his country presented both “opportunities and challenges.”
Even though the Kremlin has tried to divert the attention of the Russian public away from the war, the tentacles of the conflict still reached to the expo halls, where giant drones were on exhibition, while armored vehicles were parked in front of the press center. Inside, there was no Coca-Cola for reporters — that had been replaced by a Russian-made analog.
Vyacheslav Fyodorishchev, governor of the Samara region, south of Moscow, said, “Ten years ago we were gathering here to discuss how to attract foreign investments faster.”
“Today,” he noted, “we discuss what additional measures we can implement to defend our technologies and our businesses”
Ivan Nechepurenko covers Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the countries of the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
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