Moscow Offers West’s Extreme Right Validation Because It No Longer has Much Else to Offer Anyone Else, Memorial Researcher Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 26 – Many in the West mocked the decline in the status of the foreign guests at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum noting that world leaders no longer came but instead had been replaced by “conspiracy theorists and convicted criminals” from the West’s far right, Inna Bondarenko says.

            But in doing so, they missed the main point of this meeting now, the Memorial researcher says. By attracting this different audience Moscow is “validating” these people by flattering them and making them feel “they matter” (themoscowtimes.com/2026/06/26/russia-helps-the-western-far-right-feel-at-home-a93112).

            That is easy for Russia to do, she continues, as “there is very little in today’s Russian message that is distinctly Russian. The anti-woke politics, the anti-migrant rhetoric, the vaccine scepticism, the panic about Western decline – none of it originated” in Russia. Instead, these grievances have been “imported from Western culture wars” and lightly “repackaged.”

            According to Bondarenko, “this is the change that matters most, hiding in plain sight behind the spectacle. The USSR exported the image of a forward-looking country, which the world debated until its collapse. Contemporary Russia has no idea of its own to export, and sowWhat it offers instead is a mirror to the conspiracists of the world.”

            “These days,” she says, “that is the only thing Russia has left to offer — and, increasingly, the only thing the far-right still travels there to collect. The guest list and spectacle are easy to laugh at. The rest is harder.”