SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP) — Westerners are set to be few and far between at Vladimir Putin’s landmark business forum, once an emblem of East-West ties, which kicks off Wednesday in the Russian president’s home city of Saint Petersburg.

Despite United States President Donald Trump pushing a rapprochement with Putin, Russia’s offensive on Ukraine means Americans and Europeans will largely shun the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) — once dubbed “Russia’s Davos” — for a fourth year running.

Some 20,000 guests from 140 countries are set to take part in the forum both online and in person, according to the Kremlin.

Among the states sending high-level government figures are the likes of China, Vietnam, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso.

Russian officials said some Western executives will attend.

“American business representatives, but I can’t say at what level,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters at a briefing Tuesday.

According to the official program, not a particularly high one.

A panel on Thursday, titled simply “Russia-USA,” will feature the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, some private investors, the founder of a microphone manufacturer and head of a crypto project.

But in one high-profile win for Putin, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto skipped an invitation to the G7 in Canada, choosing instead to meet Putin and attend SPIEF.

Merkel, Rutte, Abe

The forum comes amid intense speculation in Russia about the prospect of sanctions relief and the return of Western firms that left the country after Moscow launched its offensive on Ukraine in February 2022.

Hundreds of companies sold off, abandoned or gave away their Russian operations — ranging from McDonald’s and Nike to Ford and Goldman Sachs.

Putin has at times blasted them for departing, warned they will not be allowed to return and said Russia is better off without them.

He has also introduced punitive counter-sanctions, restricting the ability of firms from so-called “unfriendly” countries from accessing their profits and imposing huge exit fees and taxes on any wishing to leave.

Trump’s return to the White House and opening of diplomacy with Russia led to a frenzy of headlines in Russian media about whether he would ease US sanctions.

Once a fixture of Europe’s business calendar, SPIEF was where Western leaders, CEOs and major investors gathered to seal deals on entering and expanding their footprint in Russia.

Then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended in 2013, as did Mark Rutte, the Netherlands’ prime minister and now the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — the man marshalling the military alliance’s response to Putin’s Ukraine offensive.

Its prestige started to dip after 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and was hit with the first tranche of Western sanctions.

But even as recently as 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron and Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sat on stage alongside Putin.