The streets of St Petersburg were meant to be lined with banners for the Kremlin’s flagship economic forum, a stage to parade Russia’s resilience against Western sanctions. Instead, they were filled with the wail of air raid sirens. A series of drone strikes struck the city in the early hours of Thursday, sending delegates scrambling for shelter and exposing a vulnerability the Kremlin had tried to keep under wraps.
For three days, the St Petersburg International Economic Forum was meant to project strength. State media had promised a display of new trade deals and investment pledges from friendly nations. But as the smoke cleared over the Neva River, the reality was stark: nobody is safe. Not the elite. Not the business class. Not even in Russia’s second city, 600 miles from the front lines.
Workers at the Expoforum convention centre described scenes of panic. “We were setting up for a speech by the energy minister when the alarms went off,” said a cleaner, who asked not to be named. “People ran. Some left their briefcases and just ran. It was like the war had finally come here.”
The attacks, claimed by Ukrainian sources, hit a fuel depot and a logistics hub near the port. No major casualties were reported, but the psychological damage is immense. For the ordinary people of St Petersburg, the war has always felt distant, a TV drama. Now the explosions were real, rattling windows and fraying nerves.
This is not just a military setback. It is an economic one. The forum, already a shadow of its pre-war self, saw key investors cancel at the last minute. The rouble, which had been propped up by capital controls and high oil prices, wobbled. The message to global markets is clear: Russia cannot guarantee the safety of its own financial heartland.
Behind the bravado, the Kremlin is worried. The war has drained the treasury. Inflation is eating into wages, even in ‘stable’ cities like St Petersburg. A shop assistant I spoke to on the metro told me her grocery bill has doubled in a year. “The forum is for them,” she said, gesturing towards the VIP motorcades. “We just want the war to end.”
Unions, long suppressed, are stirring. Workers at a nearby car plant have demanded hazard pay after a drone fragment landed in their factory yard. The government has so far refused, citing ‘wartime necessity’. But the cracks are showing.
For the West, this is a moment to watch. The drone strikes prove that Ukraine’s reach is growing. But they also prove that the cost of this war is spreading. Not just in Ukraine, but in Russian cities where families once felt insulated from the conflict.
The St Petersburg forum will limp on, smaller and more tense. But the illusion has been shattered. The Kremlin tried to sell a story of invincibility. The drones wrote a different headline: Russia is vulnerable, and its people are paying the price.
