The Yalta International Economic Forum, which has been postponed for the last several years, may be held in Moscow in September 2023, according to Sergey Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea.
Aksyonov said that the forum will be held “jointly with the new regions,” referring to the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” and Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and that it will coincide with the anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the territories.
The Kremlin-backed governor said on Telegram that the decision to move the forum from Crimea to Moscow is the result of “certain logistical peculiarities.”
Russia launched the Yalta International Economic Forum in 2015, the year after it annexed the Crimean peninsula. Moscow canceled the event in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and again in 2022 due to the “unstable international situation,” according to Interfax.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, drone attacks and explosions have been reported regularly at strategic facilities in Crimea.