ShayGaetz

German-Canadian Paleo-Libertarian polyglot with too much free time on his hands

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@Mylovanov

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@ZelenskyyUa 🤣😂😅

Président Zelensky composing his open letter to Бункерный дед

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@ZelenskyyUa

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@niusde_ Schon vor Merkels Massenzuwanderung konnte Deutschland es nicht „schaffen“.

https://t.co/MfaCSU27se

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@HGMaassen Schon vor Merkels Massenzuwanderung konnte Deutschland es nicht „schaffen“.

https://t.co/MfaCSU27se

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@MarioNawfal That’s what happens when atomic power and affordable electricity is sacrificed on the green altar

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@zerohedge

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@faznet Das erklärt, warum ich die FDP wähle

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@RepDonBacon

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

Putin forgot to ask Ukrainians for permission to hold the 2026 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and the event opened not with investment news, but with smoke rising above an oil terminal.

A few hours before the opening, Ukrainian drones struck an oil export terminal in St. Petersburg. Smoke was visible from the city's historic center. Pulkovo Airport imposed flight restrictions, more than 30 flights were delayed or canceled, and 59 drones were shot down over Russia’s Leningrad region.

It is the most fitting metaphor for the entire forum. The Kremlin gathered delegations, business lobbyists, fringe politicians, and influencers to demonstrate that Russia is supposedly not isolated, supposedly attractive, and supposedly remains a "center of gravity." But Ukrainian drones destroyed that stage set before the event had even begun.

SPIEF 2026 is not an economic forum. It is a forum of wartime normalization. Its goal is not to attract investment, but to legitimize an image: the state wages an aggressive war, kills Ukrainian civilians, destroys cities, lives under sanctions - and at the same time hosts more than 150 panels about a "stable future," "pragmatic dialogue," "culture," "family values," and a "new global architecture."

This year's slogan is "Pragmatic dialogue - the path to a stable future." For Russia, that stable future looked this morning like a burning terminal and closed skies.

The forum was meant to show that everything is fine with the Russian economy. The numbers suggest otherwise. Growth collapsed from 4.9% in 2024 to about 1% in 2025; the first quarter of 2026 saw a 0.2% contraction, and the annual forecast has been lowered to a symbolic 0.4%. In May, the services sector PMI fell to 48.7 - below the growth threshold and marking the fastest contraction since September 2025. This is not development. It is an economy sustained by war, sanctions evasion, and state spending.

Western capital has not systematically returned. Individual people have returned - and that is precisely why they must be named. They are the supporting cast in the Kremlin's spectacle.

They may call it business, culture, "pragmatism," or "dialogue." But it looks different: they help the Kremlin show that it’s possible to sit in the same room with Russia, shake hands, and talk about the future - as if Mariupol, Bucha, Izium, and the attacks on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, and Kryvyi Rih simply didn’t exist.

This isn’t neutrality. It is complicity.

Western guests perform specific functions for the Kremlin, and each of them has a role in this circus performance.

Members of Alternative for Germany - Bundestag member Steffen Kotré, Saxon state parliament member Jörg Urban, and Matthias Moosdorf - are there to show that "not all of Germany is against Russia." Their party has been pushing a pro-Kremlin line for years.

Business lobbyists Matthias Schepp, head of the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce, and Vincenzo Trani, president of the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce, are there to demonstrate that "Europe wants to trade."

Billionaire Thomas Bruch, linked to the Globus/Hyperglobus retail chain, is there to show that money matters more than crimes: he simply does not want to give up Russian revenues.

Fringe members of the European Parliament - Luxembourg's Fernand Kartheiser and Romania's Diana Șoșoacă - are needed solely to create the appearance of "cracks in Brussels," where they are known more as eccentrics than as serious politicians.

The American contingent is especially revealing.

The official U.S. representative is Rodney Mims Cook Jr., chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts: Washington sent to St. Petersburg a man whose job is to ensure that state monuments look good.

Alongside him are Candace Owens, Steven Seagal, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who has long ago reinvented himself as a full-time Kremlin defender, and against this backdrop - the Tate brothers.

No authority figures came to the forum. Those who did come are people willing to stand in front of the cameras and reinforce the Kremlin's favorite narrative: "The West is decaying, but part of the West is already with Russia."

The Tate brothers are perhaps the most fitting symbol of this company. Andrew and Tristan Tate arrived in Moscow on the eve of the forum and received a welcome with bread, salt, and folk songs.

Since 2022, they have been under investigation in Romania on charges that include forming an organized criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking of minors, and sexual relations with a minor. They also face separate charges in the United Kingdom.

Russia turned them into honored guests, coinciding with the announcement of a panel on "family values" featuring Owens. The cynicism was so blatant that even the pro-Kremlin military channel Rybar winced and described the choice as "shameful."

This is the true formula of SPIEF 2026: a state that kills civilians in Ukraine invites people with scandal-ridden reputations to speak about values, culture, and the future. These are not "traditional values." This is moral decay put on display.

The non-Western part of the picture was meant to demonstrate that "Russia has an alternative world."

China sent Vice President Han Zheng - one level below the representation of previous years, though few will notice. Guest country Saudi Arabia brought Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman together with a delegation of nearly 200 people and Saudi Aramco’s management - to discuss how to jointly keep the price of what both of them live off.

Uzbekistan and President Shavkat Mirziyoyev are needed by Rosatom: Putin and Mirziyoyev were supposed to launch the construction of the first nuclear power plant unit in the Jizzakh region via video link.

Tanzania sent President Samia Suluhu Hassan - an African connection and access to the Indian Ocean.

But this is not an equal global architecture. It is cynical pragmatism, authoritarian solidarity, and a willingness to do business with an aggressor.

SPIEF 2026 is trying to prove that Russia remains a center of gravity. Russia wanted to project normality. Instead, it revealed an economy that can no longer separate itself from war.

The war is no longer somewhere "out there" in Ukraine. It is already present in Russia's ports, airports, budgets, insurance risks, logistics routes, and investment decisions.

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@BBCSteveR

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@HGMaassen

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@BarbaraRKay

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@olex_scherba

[Jonathan Kay @jonkay]

In researching the roots of the unmarked-graves panic, I re-read this 2016 @thewalrus piece, where I decried the (racist) idea of indigenous ppl as truth-telling forest elves with secret (& unfalsifiable) "knowings" from land, animals, & the dead. elves need no fact-checking…

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@letsgoalicew https://t.co/WXBp2POpLk

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

Deutschlands bestes Szenario ist eigentlich ganz einfach: zugleich die Ukraine nach außen unterstützen und im Inneren wieder Ordnung herstellen.

Eine klare Mehrheit der Wähler sieht darin keinen Widerspruch.

Das Beste aus beiden Welten kann durch das Geben und Nehmen einer Koalitionsverhandlung zwischen Union und AfD erreicht werden – einer Regierung also, die den Mehrheitswillen des Landes tatsächlich abbildet.

Besser das, als Deutschland und die Ukraine gleichermaßen durch ein Bündnis aus BSW und Linke zu verraten.

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@RZitelmann

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@derspiegel

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@BohuslavskaKate

[ShayGaetz @MajorPriapus]

@ZelenskyyUa