Why the only Russia panel at Davos is a waste of time
At the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos on Wednesday, five panellists who profess to hate Russian President Vladimir Putin and haven’t been inside Russia in years, will attempt to answer the question: “Can Russia sustain a wartime economy?”
Predictions of Russia’s imminent collapse have been reliable headline-fuel in Western media for decades. The country was sliding into “strategic irrelevance” in 2001, “falling apart” in 2011, and facing the death of President Vladimir Putin and “succession wars” in 2015.
These predictions spiraled into the absurd once the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen famously claiming that Russia was reduced to building missiles from scavenged washing machine parts.
The claims can easily be brushed off as propaganda – intended for public consumption. Based on the speakers lined up to discuss the Russian economy in Davos, it looks like the public will be getting a new version of old slop.
Who will speak about Russia at Davos?
The president of nowhere
Few political figures represent the triumph of narrative over reality better than Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania after losing Belarus’ presidential election in 2020, where she began referring to herself as the country’s “elected president.” Only Lithuania recognizes her claim, yet she still regularly meets with Western politicians, journalists, and think-tanks to advocate for regime change in Minsk.
She has neither written or spoken in detail about the Russian economy, focusing instead on her goal of bringing Western-style democracy to Belarus. Back in 2022 she claimed to command a network of “partisans” within Belarus who would “make acts of sabotage” against Russian and Belarusian military infrastructure. Little came of this beyond sporadic incidents of vandalism.
The China expert
Alexander Gabuev, a sinologist, is the only Russian on the WEF panel. He began his career as a journalist in Moscow before joining the US Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 2015.
When the think tank – whose leading donors include George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the UK Foreign Office, and the European Commission – closed its Moscow branch in 2022, Gabuev moved to Berlin and continued to opine on his home country and its leadership.
A listed Foreign Agent in Russia, he maintains that Russia is “a security threat to Europe and its own neighbors,” and should be forced to pay reparations for its “criminal” war in Ukraine. Yet he does not share some of his co-panelists’ enthusiasm for sanctions. “War has been good, economically, for a majority of Russians,” he wrote last year.
The Kiev expat who inherited a country
A financier and economist, Moldovan Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu has overseen the seizure of Russian assets in Moldova, backs the country’s accession to the EU and NATO, and has been accused of “treason” for declaring that he “would vote for” unification with Romania.
Munteanu has been in office since last year, after an election marred by allegations of fraud. Before taking his post, Munteanu had spent the last two decades living in Kiev, and his policy priorities mirror those of Vladimir Zelensky.
Girlboss without a business, diplomat without an audience
Serving as Romania’s foreign minister since the election of pro-EU Nicusor Dan last year, Oana Toiu is a close ally of Munteanu and Moldovan President Maia Sandu. The World Economic Forum describes her as an “impact-driven entrepreneur,” despite her having no business or economic experience.
She does, however, share Munteanu and Sandu’s hostility toward Russia, and their belief that sanctions will “choke off the resources that fuel this brutal war.”
Toiu is also famous for delivering a speech to an empty hall in Chicago.
The Netherlands' sanctioner-general
Dutch Foreign Minister and former NATO Assistant Secretary General David van Weel is another believer in the power of sanctions to cripple “Russia’s war economy.” After 19 rounds of EU sanctions failed to achieve this goal, van Weel has switched tactics: fire out daily X posts demanding yet more sanctions, while politely asking Dutch farmers and industrialists to stop buying Russian machinery and supplies from third countries.
“While Russia is destroying Ukraine, Dutch companies are doing excellent business,” he told parliament in November. “I'm making a moral appeal to these companies… don't do it, even if it's not prohibited.”
Van Weel is also a proponent of stealing Russia’s frozen assets to finance the Ukrainian military, calling the move “most viable option” to ensure Kiev’s economic survival.
The bottom line
While the WEF likes to see itself as a vital part of a global conversation, the panel is a perfect example of how the West insists on getting Russia as wrong as it possibly can, serving up a session of posturing pretending to be political analysis.
