(EDM) The annual Davos gathering of the World Economic Forum used to be an occasion where Russia’s always uncertain future was a key topic for debates and investment decisions, but this year it was pointedly ignored. Russia is indeed irrelevant for the main theme of this Forum—the “fourth industrial revolution”, in which information and industrial technologies are blending together—because it has graduated from laggard to loser in this revolution (Moscow Echo, January 22). Russia is also out of place in the “breaking news” sessions focused on China’s economic slowdown and Iran’s coming out of its long isolation (Rbc.ru, January 23). It has nothing to say on the European migration crisis and cannot pretend to be a useful contributor to the attempts at breaking the deadlock in the Syrian negotiations, because the meetings last week between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yielded few results (Kommersant, January 21). Russian and Ukrainian delegations continued bargaining about mutual overdue debts, but most Europeans remained indifferent knowing that no interruption of the still-important gas flow could possibly occur because of this bickering (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 21). […]
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