We were of course delighted to see the wonderful Nicolai Petrov of the Carnegie Center publish an op-ed in the Moscow Times that makes a perfect bookend for our editorial condemning the Valdai charade. We hope he’s right when he says that even the Valdai participants themselves are getting creeped out by the immorality of it all.
Amid all of the events surrounding Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia these past few weeks, I nearly forgot that the latest session of the Valdai Discussion Club was about to begin. The club was launched five years ago and is one of the Kremlin’s most successful public relations projects. This time it took place in Rostov-on-Don, Grozny and Sochi.