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Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Artem Geodakyan/Sputnik, AFP
The Kremlin said on Saturday that journalists from “unfriendly countries” would not be allowed into the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which President Vladimir Putin has used to showcase the Russian economy to global investors.
“It has indeed been decided this time not to accredit publications from unfriendly countries to the SPIEF,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS, using the acronym for the forum held annually in Russia’s former imperial capital.
“Interest in SPIEF is always great; all other journalists will work on the site,” Peskov said. “Unfriendly countries” is a definition used by Moscow to describe those sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
The organisers told Reuters’ Moscow bureau of the forum on Friday that accreditation for its journalists had been cancelled after receiving an earlier confirmation of accreditation on Thursday.
Reuters sought written clarification, but none has been issued yet.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said it will not close “the window” to Europe, which Tsar Peter the Great sought to open 300 years ago, even though the West has recently imposed the most onerous sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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