Fair of vanity

How was the 27th St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which no one of the Western countries came to, but the Taliban arrived

The International Economic Forum ended in St. Petersburg. More precisely, he was once truly international: since 1997, when the PMEF was held for the first time, the leaders of all the largest countries managed to visit him. This year, the main guests at the speech of Vladimir Putin were the leaders of Bolivia and Zimbabwe, and the most unusual participants in the festival are the Taliban delegation (the terrorist organization still banned in Russia), which everyone was looking for to take pictures together. The journalist of Novo-Europe visited this event and tried to evaluate whether there is at least some sense in it now.

Ticket for a million four hundred

In additional times, the entrance ticket cost about 320-400 thousand rubles, depending on the package: with or without a visit to the plenary meeting. The plenary meeting is Putin and his foreign guests. After Kovid, the ticket began to cost almost a million, but there were no less wanted. After all, here you can not just walk around the stands and look at Putin: it is important for someone to decorate the office with your own photographs surrounded by a political establishment.

- There is still an important nuance: all the issues that people solve on the forum can be solved anywhere. But walk, break through, negotiate, coordinate all this in Moscow corridors-it can take a month and a half, or even more. Here you will solve this in a day, or even during the lunch, ”said Vadim Kovalev, former executive director of the Association of Russian Managers (AMR). - Therefore, the shores of this price tag are further and further from common sense.

But this year showed that the coast does not seem to exist at all: the cost of the entrance amounted to 1 million 400 thousand rubles. And this is only for the entrance itself. Those wishing to come to their own stand (even very tiny) had to lay out an additional several million. Demand was: “Roscongress” as an organizer can not worry about the profitability of the event.

In general, the St. Petersburg Economic Forum never experienced problems with the number of participants: “Expoforum”, although it is far from the city (driving a little longer than to the airport in Pulkovo), and with transport accessibility here is not very idle (neither metro, nor trains), never idle.

It is difficult to trace logic how the stands of the participants are placed. Regions can mix with the media, banks - with state corporations. Eclecticism both in visual design and in the sound. The voice of Yuri Gagarin invites to the stand of the Smolensk region, next to the robot in the form of an employee of the housing and communal services answers your questions - a rare cacophony is obtained. There are specific exhibits - the stand of the Prosecutor General’s Office among the “market regulators”, right at the entrance. This is the first thing that the participants and guests see the barely passed frame of the metal detector. Unlike other stands, at the stand of the prosecutor's office (where for all the days of the forum I have not seen any events at all!) No one is trying to take photos - strict young women in the form have little to communicate and jokes.

In general, the most active people who wanted to take a picture were looking for the Taliban. The news that the Taliban was first officially invited to participate in the forum quickly scattered, and on the sidelines a lot was fooled by the fact that now the status of a prohibited organization will be removed from the Taliban in Russia. But no statements on this topic on the forum did not sound.

Endless cooperation

From morning till night, at all stands in all pavilions, they sign something. From everywhere it is heard: “For the signing ceremony, the Governor and Head of the Collector Carriage Department of the Central Bank, the Rector of the MGIMO Foreign Ministry and the head of the logistics company, the head of Roskadastra and the head of the company Cyan, the Vice-President of the Neftechemic Company of Sibur and the organization of Russia are invited. You, in principle, can substitute any randomly selected regions and companies-it is likely that they also sign something with each other. Why this cannot be done in a regular working environment, in your office, is not very clear.

Some leading ceremonies, tired of the routine monotony and the need to shout neighboring stands, switch from an announcer for commentary:

“An agreement is signed between the Ministry of Sports and the Boxing Federation of Russia. Hooray! The contract has just been signed! We did it! "

After the press approach, I ask the first vice-governor of the Belgorod region Dmitry Gladsky, who has just signed an agreement with Sberbank:

- What is the essence of the contract?

- Sber is one of the leaders in the development of artificial intelligence.

- How will this help the region? - Is it worth it to remind you that we have heard about the Belgorod region recently only in connection with military operations ...

- There are achievements, we will study ...

That is, the first vice-governor himself does not yet know why all this is needed.

The Governor of Udmurtia Alexander Brechalov gives an interview about how new signed agreements will help the republic:

- We signed an agreement with Wildberries - a large supplier comes to the region.

It’s even embarrassing to ask the head of the region explanations: one of the companies will open the issues of issuing orders. Why is this the level of the governor?

The absurdity of everything that happens increases every year.

- But I really like everything! I did not expect it that it was so interesting, ”Pavel Sadkov, deputy chief editor of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, shares his impressions with his impressions.

Television propaganda to work here is one expanse. Passages are almost a kilometer with a length, pavilions more than a dozen meters high. Wherever you turn the camera - it’s beautiful everywhere. The largest pavilions are among banks (Alfa-Bank and VTB clearly tried to crush a scale). There are many stands of the state media. A lot - in the regions. Not all are represented. The stands of Sevastopol, the “Lugansk People’s Republic” are noticeable (due to its size), and the stands of Tatar and Bashkiria are traditionally standing out due to their competently chosen position (almost in the very center of the forum space). At the Bashkir stand, all the days are the crowd - there they printed and immediately distributed T -shirts with quotes from Vladimir Putin and the local chapter Radiy Khabirov.

Some of the "round tables" are devoted to technological developments, but in most cases everyone breaks up to political statements:

“For me, a personal victory was the departure from Russia McDonald's,” Anna Popova, the head of Rospotrebnadzor, proudly declares from the stage.

Plenary meeting

So that the senior gentlemen do not suffer, the governor of St. Petersburg ordered 2-3 weeks to the forum to begin evacuation from the sidewalks of the city of all scooters-it does not matter that this violated all the laws of common sense and economy.

The city stands in traffic jams: to leave the territory of the Expoforum, numb around the perimeter, is at least half an hour, get to the shuttle (it is better to forget about a taxi at all) to the city center - at least two hours.

The main event of the forum is a plenary session in which Vladimir Putin traditionally participates. The program includes the numbers “14:00 - 16:00”, but everyone knows that Putin is always late. As a result, Putin appeared at about 15:00 along with his guests - the leaders of Bolivia and Zimbabwe.

Always, until the last keeps a secret who will be a moderator of the meeting. The times when it was Sofiko Shevarnadze have long passed - now it is in the fashion of hawks. Political scientist Sergei Karaganov, unexpectedly selected for this role, tried to match her as much as possible. He began, according to the fact that 25 years ago Putin “saved Russia”, and urged him this time to save the world.

Karaganov is a great supporter of the idea of ​​using nuclear weapons. And in general, he managed to speak Putin in the same language:

“Until the rooster pecked, nothing happened,” the government appreciated the work of the government, preparing the ground for Putin's joke.

“We’ll send the rooster to the soup, do not worry,” Putin promised. - Because he does not trample the chicken. Why is it needed, this cock?

The audience in the hall was flooded with laughter - everyone was accustomed to jokes for reproduction and were ready to actively support.

Essentially, Putin did not say anything fundamental new: he called the power in Kyiv a “usurped”, promised that there would be no new mobilization, promised a number of social benefits and said that Russia should be included in the top 4 of the largest economies in the world.