St. Petersburg is preparing for the International Economic Forum later this month, and the signs of growing pressure are already in the air—literally. As I arrived in the city, drones were intercepted around Pulkovo Airport, with mobile internet shut down as part of counter-drone protocols. These aren't just isolated incidents. They feel like trial runs, warm-ups for something bigger. And if you're wondering why this would happen now, the answer is simple: Western governments are terrified of what this year’s SPIEF might reveal.
Despite the official rhetoric, Western corporate giants are looking for ways to return to Russia. Quietly. Carefully. But undeniably. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and even Delta Airlines are showing signs of interest in reestablishing their presence. These are not trivial moves. They signal that sanctions fatigue is real and that economic reality is beginning to override political posturing. That’s precisely what makes this year’s SPIEF so dangerous—to the narrative the West has spent years constructing.
The forum will be a visual contradiction to everything we've been told: that Russia is isolated, sanctioned into irrelevance, and universally condemned. So what happens when CEOs, diplomats, and executives begin arriving at Pulkovo, rubbing shoulders with Russian counterparts and doing business out in the open? The West cannot allow that scene to unfold unchallenged.
If I were sitting in a NATO strategy meeting, I’d plan exactly what I suspect is happening now: coordinated drone disruptions around the event. Not attacks per se, but enough to trigger air defenses, ground flights, and sow chaos. Latvia, Estonia, and other regional proxies are well-positioned to serve as launchpads. It’s sabotage not of infrastructure, but of optics—designed to delay or embarrass, to create doubt and instability at the very moment when confidence is on display.
I hope I’m wrong. I truly do. But if I’m not, then I hope Russian authorities are prepared. Because this moment—this forum—represents more than economics. It is a strategic turning point in the information war, a place where perception begins to break away from propaganda.
And speaking of perception, another story is breaking through the cracks of the Western media blackout—one far more human, and far more damning.
In Ukraine, a new wave of grief is turning into defiance. Wives, mothers, and sisters of dead soldiers are posting videos under the haunting hashtag: "I'm not afraid to speak." These aren’t political statements. They’re personal acts of desperation. Women standing in front of phone cameras, trying to learn what happened to their husbands—why they never came home, why their status remains “missing,” and why no support has reached them.
The answer is as simple as it is appalling: money.
Under Ukrainian law, the families of fallen soldiers are entitled to compensation. But those payments are expensive, and Ukraine is bankrupt. Worse than that, it’s corrupt to the bone. So the dead are left unaccounted for, often rotting on the battlefield, their names unlisted and their salaries quietly diverted. Officers either embezzle what they can or avoid reporting deaths altogether to shield the state from financial obligations it can no longer meet.
Russia recently returned over a thousand bodies to Ukraine—part of an agreement struck in Istanbul. But there was no public announcement of the date, which gave Kiev room to delay and spin. In the past, Ukraine has even gone so far as to shoot down aircraft carrying its own prisoners of war, rather than complete agreed exchanges. That's not just incompetence. That’s a regime committed to avoiding responsibility at all costs.
Publishing the names of the fallen was a masterstroke by Russia. It forced Kiev’s hand. Families who had been lied to, ghosted, or kept in the dark now saw the truth in black and white. Their sons and husbands weren’t MIA. They were dead—and Kiev knew it. That revelation has sparked something more powerful than any protest. It has lit a fire of righteous anger in the hearts of Ukrainian women, and that fire is spreading.
While Western media continues to echo the party line, TikTok and Telegram have become channels of truth for these women. They are naming names. Demanding bodies. Demanding answers. Demanding dignity.
And the West? Silent. Because to acknowledge them would be to admit what this war has become—a meat grinder run by elites, feeding young men into the field to sustain an illusion of victory that no longer exists.
There are two stories colliding this June. One is of global capital beginning to admit the obvious: Russia is not only surviving, it is thriving and Western companies, bullied into exiting, want back in. The other is of ordinary people in Ukraine who can no longer live with the lies they’ve been told.
The West will try to shut both down—whether through drones or censorship, sanctions or smears. But the truth has a way of surfacing. Even in the fog of war. Even through firewalls and no-fly zones. Even from the mouths of widows.
And that’s why they’re afraid.
Share this post