Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press conference with heads of global news agencies earlier this month attracted significant media coverage. Attention was mainly focused on the response he gave to a British journalist regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the current standoff with the West. However, it is the setting which is no less important: the northernmost skyscraper in the world, built in the suburbs of Saint Petersburg by Gazprom, the main Russian conglomerate in the hydrocarbon sector.
The skyscraper is named Lakhta Centre, after the ancient village where it is built. It was from Lakhta that a gigantic granite boulder was transported eight kilometers to the center of the city in 1769-1770 to become the pedestal of the majestic statue of Peter the Great, the founder of the city. The poet Alexander Pushkin called it the “Bronze Horseman,” and this is what townspeople and visitors have called the monument for two centuries.
Since we were then celebrating the 225the birthday of the poet, Mr. Putin went after the press conference to the high school where Pushkin studied. During this visit, Vladimir Medinski, former Russian Minister of Culture, showed his boss a map of the 19th century Russian Empire.e century, of which Ukraine is an integral part. Medinski, we remember, led the Russian delegation during the peace negotiations in 2022, a process abruptly interrupted by the Ukrainian side.
It was in this same poem that Pushkin coined another expression, which became a common phrase: “a window to Europe.” Indeed, Pierre founded the city in order to facilitate access to European ideas, culture, science and technology. It was Étienne Maurice Falconet, recommended to the empress of the time, Catherine the Great, by Denis Diderot, spearhead of the Enlightenment in France, who designed the Bronze Horseman. In fact, the city was originally built largely by French, Italian and Swiss architects.
It was also a European architect, the Scotsman Tony Kettle, who designed this 462 meter high skyscraper. The Gazprom Tower overlooks the Gulf of Finland and symbolizes the city’s vocation as a window on Europe. However, the sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014 have severed most ties with the rest of Europe. Today, a plane trip to the Finnish capital, Helsinki, which took 52 minutes, takes almost 10 hours, and requires a connection in Istanbul, a detour of more than 3,000 km.
The new Iron Curtain is more watertight than its Cold War predecessor. Under Stalin, at the height of the Korean War, trains connected Russia with most European countries. Under Brezhnev, while Americans fought Soviet-equipped Vietnamese soldiers, regular flights were inaugurated between Moscow and New York.
While Russia sees its window on Europe walled off, the country is turning towards the east. The news conference was held on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an event that once attracted dozens of European leaders as well as United Nations secretaries-general and European Commission presidents.
This year, the forum welcomed as many participants, more than 21,000 people from 139 countries, but especially from the Global South, which is home to the majority of the world’s population. Western participants have been fewer in number, as sanctions disrupt economic relations and Western governments discourage participation. In one case, three armed and uniformed U.S. officers prevented an American on his way to Istanbul and St. Petersburg from boarding the plane in New York and seized his passport, apparently on orders from the U.S. State Department.
The St. Petersburg forum embodies current developments in the world. What was initially supposed to be a way to punish Russia by cutting it off from its Western partners turned out to be a blessing in disguise. According to the World Bank, this year Russia’s economic growth is higher than that of the rest of Europe. Furthermore, economic dynamism is found in the eastern part of the Eurasian continent, while its western lands, most of which are members of the European Union, are experiencing an economic slowdown.
It is ironic that this eastward pivot is highlighted by an event taking place in St. Petersburg, a city only slightly further from Montreal and New York than from Russia’s eastern borders. The old window on Europe thus becomes a gateway to Asia.