PALERMO – Russia will not participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos unless the terms for Russian business representatives are changed, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said.
It was reported last week that the forum organizers had decided to effectively bar prominent Russian businessmen Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg and Andrei Kostin from attending over the U.S. sanctions imposed against them last April.
“If these decisions that were made in relation to Russian business representatives are not changed, then we will be compelled to reject participation in the Davos forum by Russian government officials and employees of Russian companies owned in whole or in part by the state. Then no one will come,” Medvedev told reporters.
Medvedev said he discussed the recommendation for Russian business to reject participation in the forum with the president of the Swiss Confederation, who promised to make inquiries on that score.
“It is a very strange decision, to say the least, as they put it in the Soviet movie. I just spoke on this topic with the president of the Swiss Confederation and said that for us this is surprising, all the more so that this concerns a nongovernment organization,” Medvedev said, adding: “He said he would make inquiries.”
It has been a long time since Russia has been represented at the highest government level at the World Economic Forum: the president last attended in 2011 and the prime minister in 2013. But every year since then, despite the imposition of sanctions by Western countries, a Russian delegation led by one of the deputy prime ministers and including several government ministers and the heads of state banks and state companies has attended the forum.
