At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the Internet will be turned off due to the arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was told to the Faridaily Telegram channel, which is run by journalists Farida Rustamova and Maxim Tovkaylo, an employee of one of the telecom operators and a forum participant who learned information from the organizers. The Internet shutdown was confirmed by the press service of Roscongress, explaining this as “technical work.”
On Friday, June 16, Putin is to speak at the forum. Channel sources claim that the decision was made, among other things, so that "drones would not attack the forum site." Telecom operators have received an order from the Ministry of Digital Development, as a result, there will be no Internet throughout the Expoforum Convention and Exhibition Center.
Separately, journalists note that last week from June 7 to 9, access to the Internet was limited in Sochi and Adler due to Putin's visit to the Eurasian Congress. Then the congress participant said that due to the disconnection of LTE, taxi applications, bank cards did not work, and cellular calls almost did not go through.
Forum participants will at best have to settle for Wi-Fi provided by the organizers, but it may not be able to cope with the load, since there are more than a thousand people on the forum.
Earlier, the Kremlin press service reported that Putin will hold talks with President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan within the framework of the SPIEF. This year the UAE is represented as one of the guests.
On the first day of the SPIEF, not a single foreign leader was noticed at the forum, but officials from the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia and stands of the “annexed” regions with Rossiysky cheese were lit up. Also, SPIEF participants were shown Russian drones from AliExpress and robots, which actually turned out to be animators in costumes. Read more about the first day of SPIEF in The Insider review .