As the world’s finest oligarchs and sycophants gather in St Petersburg for Putin’s annual economic festival, the theatrics were rudely interrupted by a swarm of Ukrainian drones buzzing the rooftops. How gloriously apt. A summit designed to project invincibility, a grand stage for the new Russian imperium, transformed into a tableau of vulnerability. The symbolism is so thick, one could choke on it.
This is not the first time technicolour projections of Russian might have been punctured by a drone. We recall the Kremlin’s absurd declarations of a ‘special military operation’ being a three-day stroll. Instead, we got a two-year slog. And now, as the elite sip their Krug and nibble canapés under the chandeliers of the Expoforum, the whine of UAVs serves as a grim coda to the entire charade.
Is this 1917, or merely 1915? The question is deliberate and instructive. The Romanov tercentenary in 1913 was a pageant of supposed unity and strength. Two years later, the Tsar was commanding an army that was melting away. The Russian economy, far from being a fortress, was a Potemkin village. Today’s forum, with its promises of ‘import substitution’ and ‘technological sovereignty’, resembles that imperial gesture more than we care to admit.
Consider the venue’s very premise. This forum was to showcase a nation that had ‘turned the corner’. Yet its guests are greeted by the sound of exploding drones. The financial sector, supposedly shielded from sanctions, is now a ghost town of Swiss banks and Emirati shell companies. The energy sector, once a colossus, now sells at a discount to whatever pariah state will take it. And the military, the pride of the nation? It has become a meat grinder reliant on Iranian intelligence and North Korean artillery.
There is, of course, a lesson for the West in all this. But not the one the neo-conservatives want. The lesson is not that Russia can be ‘defeated’. It is that empires, when they decay, do so with a terrible noise. They lash out. They burn their own past. They create vacuums. And as the Roman example shows, the barbarians are often not the ones breaching the walls; they are the ones we are forced to rely on to keep order after the collapse.
The striking of St Petersburg is a tactical pinprick. But tactically, it is also a strategic earthquake. It tells every Russian, every investor, every neutral observer that the Kremlin cannot protect its own. And when a regime cannot protect its own, it must either terrify or conciliate. Terrifying is expensive and breeds resentment. Conciliation is seen as weakness. The tightrope is fraying.
So as the drones flew over the Neva, I imagine Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman looking down with a knowing smile. Or perhaps it was a grimace. The horseman, after all, is Peter the Great, the founder of St Petersburg, the man who ‘cut a window to the West’. That window now has Ukrainians looking in. The irony is Chekhovian.
What happens next? The usual script: bluster, promises of retaliation, accusations of ‘Western provocation’. But underneath, there will be sweat. There will be jittery generals and nervous oligarchs. There will be a tightening of censorship and a loosening of reality. And eventually, there will be a reckoning. It may not come tomorrow. But the calendar is ticking. And in this long autumn of the Russian empire, each drone is a leaf falling.
This is not analysis of victory. It is analysis of decay. And a warning to all those who think the fall of one empire leaves the world safer. History teaches that it leaves the world emptier and more dangerous. But tonight, at least, we can permit ourselves a small, cynical laugh at the spectacle of power stripped of its pretence.
