This was a smokescreen that revealed more than it hid.
The pillar of black fumes rising into the summer sky above St Petersburg on Wednesday reminded the world, and especially those international would-be investors who had travelled to the showpiece St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), that Russia is at war – and the war had come to the same city as they had.
There was no question who launched the attack. In an open letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky wrote: “Our long-range drones paid a visit to the opening of your forum in St. Petersburg.”
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It is tempting to imagine Zelensky, even as his country continues to endure deadly Russian strikes, permitting himself just the tiniest moment of laughter as he and his advisers came up with this insolent line – as if they were in a script meeting for one of the TV comedies in which the Ukrainian leader once starred.
