Mixing Business and Pleasure: The Lighter Side of the Eastern Economic Forum

The Eastern Economic Forum has wrapped up after four days of speeches, panel discussions and exhibitions on issues ranging from geopolitics to global trade, business and technological innovation. But the forum wasn’t all about stuffy suits, serious faces and wheeling and dealing. Sputnik looks back at some light-hearted moments from the event.

The EEF went out with a bang on Thursday with a grand concert by folk groups from Primorye, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, Yakutia, Chukotka and Buryatia at the Vladivostok Seasons festival in the city’s central square.

Participants of the Vladivostok Seasons festival music competition. September 8, 2022.

© Photo : vl.ru

The vast stomping grounds where the forum itself took place, situated on Russian Island – linked to Vladivostok via a massive cable-stayed bridge across the Peter the Great Gulf, were accentuated by their calorie-burning features. Organizers calculated that even the most lethargic of forum participants walked up to 30,000 steps every day they attended the event, which was spread across multiple venues.

The fitness theme was further highlighted by a 5k run organized on the first day, with Russia’s sport ministry actually setting up two separate pavilions – one devoted to business and the other to physical culture itself. The latter included a competition based on Russia’s ‘Ready for Labor and Defense’ (GTO) sport standard.

Participants in the GTO test at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

© Sputnik / Pavel Bedniakov

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Athletes from all 11 regions of the Far Eastern Federal District and other sporting enthusiasts took part in the competition, called GTO Games-2022.

Participants who prefer to use another muscle – their brains, got a chance to do so at a chess tournament, with Russian chess grandmaster Sergei Karjakin offering amateurs a chance to face off against him as he played multiple simultaneous games. Chess enthusiasts faced off for the EEF Cup, which offered a prize fund of an eye-watering 3 million rubles (about $49,000 US).

Which Element Are You?

With Russian government agencies, media and businesses setting up more than a dozen exhibitions dedicated to regional economic initiatives, investment opportunities, innovation platforms and more, pavilion organizers had to come up with some original ideas to entice forum attendees into visiting their stands.

Rostourism – the Russian government agency which as the name suggests is responsible for promoting tourism, came up with an interesting interactive quiz, encouraging guests to answer three questions to find out which element of nature they belong to and subsequently coming up with advice on where in Russia they should take their next vacation.

The quiz seemed timely amid the crisis in relations between Moscow and the West, with Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Chernyshenko revealing at a session of the forum that Russians have been spending $20-$30 billion on holidays abroad in recent years, and need an alternative place to holiday as Western countries close their doors to them.

Not to be outdone by Rostourism, Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology featured its own eye-popping Avatar-style installation, allowing forum guests to try their hand at manipulating a large, LED color-changing mock tree filled with thousands of tiny LEDs.

Prankster Master Class

Among the dozens of panel discussions and 900 forum speakers, a pair of very special clowns stood out. Vladimir ‘Vovan’ Kuznetsov and Alexei ‘Lexus’ Stolyarov, the telephone pranksters who have made careers out of tricking world leaders, Hollywood stars and other public figures into interviews, have spent years offering the rest of us insights into what some of the most powerful people on the planet are thinking and saying privately about world affairs.

In a panel discussion on Tuesday, the pair gave attendees a master class on their craft. Read their exclusive interview with Sputnik here to find out more.

Rain, Rain Go Away

If there’s one thing that the thousands of guests of the EFF will be sure to remember when thinking back on the forum, it’s the lousy weather.

Before the event even began, weather forecasters warned of the impact of Typhoon Hinnamnor, a massive tropical cyclone emerging in the central Pacific before making its way west toward the Philippines and Taiwan, turning north toward South Korea and Japan and dissipating near the Russian Far East coastal city of Okhotsk on Wednesday. Fortunately, forum organizers prepared ahead of time by offering participants complementary umbrellas, and guests didn’t let the rain spoil their days.

Year of the Tiger

Under the Chinese zodiac, 2022 is the year of the tiger. Coincidentally, Primorye’s diverse wildlife includes a broad range of exotic wild cats, including Amur tigers, Amur leopards, and Eurasian lynx.

The Amur tiger, which was hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1990s, featured prominently at EEF 2022, with a special Second International Tiger held under the forum’s auspices. The event included a tear-jerking musical performance by Dmitry Bilan – a volunteer who has spent several years now rescuing cats, tigers and leopards.

Russian Railways joined in on the tiger theme, showing off a specially liveried train featuring graphic art of Siberian tigers, tigresses and cubs. The train set off on a week-long journey from Vladivostok to Moscow along the world-famous Trans-Siberian Railway, and is expected to make 131 stops across 14 regions before arriving at its destination.

Presentation of the ‘Russia’ theme train (Vladivostok-Moscow) as part of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok

© Sputnik / Alexandr Kryazhev

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In a recorded address at the Tiger Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin –known as an avid lover of big cats himself, informed forum participants that the world’s tiger population shrunk by 30 times in the 20th century, with three of nine subspecies going extinct altogether. Fortunately, Putin said, this trend was reversed in the first two decades of the 21st century, with the total number of tigers rising by 40 percent thanks to the painstaking efforts of governments and volunteers in restoring the habitats of the majestic stripe predators.

Following up on Putin’s remarks, officials from the Ministries of Justice and Natural Resources and Ecology reported that in Russia, the habitat of wild tigers had been increased to 180,000 square kilometers, with poaching the animals made a crime under the criminal code, and the government organizing tiger rehabilitation centers. Along with officials and activists from Russia, the forum was attended by delegations from other countries where the striped cats reside, including Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar, Cambodia, North Korea, Bangladesh, India and Kazakhstan.