The annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum is supposed to be Russia’s grand showcase of resilience, a stage where Vladimir Putin can parade before oligarchs and foreign envoys to declare that the ruble is strong and the West is irrelevant. Instead, this year the city was treated to a far less choreographed display: a swarm of drones buzzing over the historic skyline, forcing the closure of the airport and sending chills through the cocktail circuit. One cannot help but think of the Roman emperors, lounging in their gardens while the barbarians nibbled at the outskirts. Only here, the drones are the barbarians, and the emperor is pretending not to notice.
Let us be blunt. The drone attacks are a tactical embarrassment, but they are symbolic of a deeper malady. For months, the Kremlin has insisted that the sanctions regime is a paper tiger. They have pointed to trade figures with China and India, to the resilience of the energy sector, to the fact that the economy shrank only 2.1% last year. And yet, here is the rub: the Western net is tightening. The latest UK sanctions target the very financial arteries that have kept the war machine alive: diamond exports, copper, aluminium, and nickel. These are not the trifling measures of a year ago. These are punches aimed at the solar plexus of the Russian export economy. The City of London, for all its bluster about Brexit and independence, still moves the global metals trade. Slap sanctions on those commodities and you send a signal to every trader from Zurich to Shanghai: dealing with Russia comes with a cost.
Meanwhile, the forum itself proceeded with a surreal air of normalcy. Putin gave a speech extolling the virtues of multipolarity, of a new world order where Russia is not isolated but a central node in a Eurasian web. It was the same script he has used since 2014: glorious autarky, import substitution, the eternal patience of the Russian soul. But the drones above were more eloquent than any speech. They whispered of a war that has come home, of an economy that, while not collapsing, is slowly bleeding out. The IMF projects that by 2026 Russia’s GDP will be 10% smaller than it would have been without the war. That is not collapse. That is a drawn-out, agonising decay, like a fever that will not break.
My more sympathetic readers might object: the West has underestimated Russia before. The sanctions have not stopped the war. The ruble is still trading, the tanks are still rolling. True enough. But compare this to the fall of the Soviet Union, which did not happen in a single dramatic moment. It happened over two decades of slow strangulation, of grain imports and oil prices, of Afghan quagmires and Chernobyl disasters. The present moment feels familiar: a great power clinging to the trappings of empire while its foundations crumble. The drone over St Petersburg is today’s Chernobyl: a single, visible crack in the facade.
And what of the UK sanctions? They are not a silver bullet. But they are a step in the right direction, a recognition that the pain must be concentrated where it hurts most: the ability of the Russian state to convert its natural resources into hard currency. London has finally grasped that the sanctions regime has been full of loopholes large enough to drive a Gazprom truck through. Closing those loopholes, targeting the metals that are the lifeblood of Russian exports, may not win the war in Ukraine tomorrow, but it ensures that the war will become increasingly expensive for Moscow. And in a global economy where capital is mobile and investors crave stability, the message to the oligarchs is clear: your money is not safe here.
So as the oligarchs sip their champagne in St Petersburg, pretending the drones are just a bad weather report, history is watching. The Victorian era had its Pax Britannica, maintained by a navy that could project power anywhere. The American century had its Pax Americana, enforced by aircraft carriers and diplomacy. What exactly does Russia have? A nuclear arsenal, yes. A seat on the UN Security Council, yes. But a sustainable economy? A population that is not shrinking? A technology sector that can compete? The answers are grim. The drones are not the cause of Russia’s decline. They are a symptom, a fly buzzing over a corpse that has not yet realised it has died.
Let the forum continue. Let the speeches be given. The West should not panic at every drone strike, nor should it imagine victory is imminent. But it should recognise the pattern: the slow, inexorable decay of an empire that has overreached. The Romans saw it in the third century, when barbarians began to raid Italy itself. The British saw it in the 1950s, when the Empire was rapidly dismantled. Now it is Russia’s turn. The only question is how long the paper tiger can roar before it runs out of breath.
