Saint Petersburg
Peter the Great's 'window to Europe' turned inward — Putin built his entire political network from this city, then relocated Gazprom here while Western sanctions sealed the window shut.
Peter the Great built Saint Petersburg in 1703 as Russia's 'window to Europe.' Three centuries later, Vladimir Putin — who built his entire political network from contacts made in this city's mayor's office in the 1990s — has systematically shuttered that window while simultaneously enriching the city that produced him. The numbers tell a story that official narratives barely hint at. When Gazprom officially relocated its headquarters from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 2022, moving into the 462-metre Lakhta Center — Europe's tallest building — the tax revenue transfer alone reshaped the city's budget.
Gazprom was not an isolated case; several major Russian corporations followed, drawn by a combination of state encouragement and the practical advantage of proximity to the president's home network. Of the sixty people ranked twentieth or higher in Russia's political elite between 2000 and 2019, a disproportionate number trace their careers to Saint Petersburg. Alexei Kudrin, Herman Gref, Dmitry Medvedev — the reformist economists and lawyers who staffed Putin's early administrations were Petersburg colleagues first.
The city of 5.4 million functions as Russia's second economy after Moscow, anchored by shipbuilding, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, IT, and the port facilities that handle a significant share of Russia's Baltic trade. But after 2022, Western sanctions, EU flight bans, and the departure of Western retailers inverted Peter's original vision. Social media filled with memes: 'Peter I opened the window to Europe; Putin will close it.
' The Kremlin's spokesman insisted the window remained open. The biological parallel is the bowerbird, which constructs elaborate display structures not for shelter but for signalling. Peter built Saint Petersburg as a costly signal to Europe — a baroque capital on frozen marshland, constructed at enormous human cost, designed to demonstrate that Russia belonged among European powers. Putin's Saint Petersburg performs the inverse signal: the Lakhta Center, the corporate relocations, the political network all signal power consolidated inward rather than projected outward.
The structure looks European, but its function has reversed.