Kazakhstan’s President Kassim-Jomart Tokayev will not attend next week’s annual economic forum in St. Petersburg, also known as the “Russian Davos,” the government in Astana announced on Friday, after the Kazakh leader refused to toe the Kremlin’s line on the Russian invasion. in Ukraine at an event organized last year, News.ro reports with reference to Reuters.

The government of Kazakhstan has announced that only two officials will represent the Central Asian nation at this year’s forum.

The forum in St. Petersburg, the former imperial capital of the Russian Empire, has been held since 1997 and is considered by Russian officials to be Moscow’s answer to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Before its invasion of Ukraine, Russia regularly hosted world leaders and business tycoons at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, but Western officials and businessmen now shun it.

Last year, Tokayev was in the spotlight, rejecting the Kremlin’s claims against Ukraine. Being on stage with Vladimir Putin, who will speak at the forum again this year, Tokayev then said that Kazakhstan does not recognize the independence of the pro-Russian republics in eastern Ukraine.

His comments raised questions because Kazakhstan, which has the world’s longest continuous land border with Russia, has been part of Moscow-led trade and security blocs for decades and considers Russia a strategic partner.

Answering the question of who will participate in this year’s conference in St. Petersburg, the spokeswoman of the government of Kazakhstan said that only Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar and Deputy Minister of Economy Timur Yaksilikov will go.

Tokayev’s office refused to comment on the reasons why he is not participating in the St. Petersburg forum, Reuters reports.

Last month, the Russian news agency RIA reported that even Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, invited by Putin, would not be able to attend this year’s forum.

On the other hand, the leader of Kazakhstan has recently increasingly given signals that he wants to distance himself from Moscow. Last month at the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) summit in Moscow, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was extremely sharp in his criticism of the union and called the observed rapprochement between Russia and Belarus a serious problem.

In addition, a few days later, he ironically rejected the idea put forward by the leader of Belarus to join the union state of Russia and Belarus in order to have nuclear protection. “I appreciated his joke,” Tokayev was quoted as saying by his press service in Telegram.

Astana has made it clear that Kazakhstan is already a member of the broader Russian-led trading bloc, the Eurasian Economic Union, so no further integration is needed. (News.ro)