Russia confirmed on Tuesday that a US delegation will attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) for the first time in nearly a decade. The visit is expected to focus on US-Russia cultural ties in yet another sign of a gradual thaw in Western relations with Moscow as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues into its fifth year.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Yuri Ushakov, an aide to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, confirmed the delegation’s participation on Tuesday. “One could say that an official US delegation led by the chair of the US administration’s Commission of Fine Arts, Rodney Cook, will arrive for the first time in several years to participate in the forum,” Ushakov said at a press briefing, according to Interfax Russia. “I would say Americans have been absent at this level since around 2017-2018,” he added. Rodney Mims Cook, head of the US federal Commission of Fine Arts, previously told Russian state media that he has been invited to attend the plenary session and Putin’s address at SPIEF. Cook, who was appointed head of the Commission of Fine Arts in January, is also the founder of the US National Monument Foundation and a specialist affiliated with the World Monuments Fund. According to Ushakov, Cook will speak at the forum’s Russia-US “Dialogue of Cultures” session alongside Valery Gergiev, director of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theaters, and Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage Museum.