MOSCOW: Hackers delayed the start of President Vladimir Putin’s speech at Russia’s premier economic summit on Friday, as Russia adjusts to the “new reality” of living under Western sanctions in the absence of substantial Western engagement.
At the 25th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which aimed to emulate the Davos World Economic Forum, state corporations made a point of signing contracts in public, and many firms had stood with floor-to-ceiling display screens and beautiful attendants.
But absent were the Western investors and investment bankers who had attended in previous years.
Vincenzo Trani, an Italian businessman, told Reuters on the margins of a session headlined “Western investors in Russia: new realities” that “new business from the Italian side is just stopped.
No new investments can be made, and people are not increasing their investments. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, stated that a denial of service assault, which operates by flooding servers with fake traffic, had compromised the accreditation and admission processes of the forum. He did not assign responsibility, but the Ukrainian situation loomed largely.
