MOSCOW, June 17. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to take part in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, June 17.
Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated earlier that the main event with Putin’s participation will be the forum’s plenary session, scheduled for June 17. The Russian leader will deliver a speech and answer questions from participants. The event is scheduled to continue for two hours.
According to Peskov, the president’s speech "will be extremely important." "Economies were taken hostage by politics, and politicians in many countries made a colossal number of mistakes amid the coronavirus," the Kremlin spokesman said, as he called the situation "an ideal systemic storm."
Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov told reporters earlier in the week that Putin would give assessments to the situation in global policy and economy in his speech at the plenary session and share the assessment of trends in forming the multipolar economic model.
Traditionally, Putin will meet with foreign leaders, and the schedule of those talks will be relatively intense, despite the complicated global situation. The Russian leader will meet with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan and Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Milorad Dodik. Talks with them are scheduled for June 17, according to the Kremlin. At the same time, no separate meetings with the heads of the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR), Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, are on the president’s schedule.
Some usual events will be changed to respond to present-day realities. For example, Putin’s traditional meeting with heads of global news agencies will not take place. Instead, he will meet with military correspondents, heads of news divisions, as well as the chiefs of Russian TV, print, and Internet media. Most of the meeting will be held behind closed doors.
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum organized by the Roscongress Foundation is running from June 15 to 18. This year’s forum is dubbed: ‘New Opportunities in a New World’. The SME Forum, the Creative Business Forum, the Drug Security Forum, the SPIEF Junior Dialogue and SPIEF Sport Week are also going to be part of the SPIEF event. TASS serves as the event’s official photo hosting agency and the information partner.