DAVOS, Switzerland — On opening night at the annual gathering of the moneyed here, Russia’s state-owned bank VTB put on a lavish party, with dancers in gorgeous versions of Russian traditional dress, Russian-style nouvelle cuisine and raucous music by, among others, the Balkan film director Emir Kusturica.
Poorly attended, it nevertheless had a purpose: to underline that, despite war in Ukraine, Western sanctions, tumbling oil prices and the weak ruble, business in and with Russia should carry on.
VTB’s president, Andrei L. Kostin, trying for a sunny note, said in his welcome, “No rain, no rainbow.”
Even so, more storm clouds loom for the Kremlin.
For Russia, the three-day event at Davos, a gathering of thousands of business figures, politicians, academics and influential people, made clear how much the sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine have damaged Moscow’s ties with Europe and the United States. Also evident was its pursuit of Asia as a key alternative.
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The International Monetary Fund pledged undetermined additional funds for bankrupt Ukraine. Its new young ministers assured Western supporters they really will root out corruption after 25 years of weak post-Soviet governance.
Russian businessmen complained privately that the West was encouraging Ukraine to go after Russia and Kremlin-backed rebels in Ukraine’s east. Western backers of Ukraine cast the conflict in epochal terms. It pits Mr. Putin’s 19th-century vision against the modern world, they said.
“The future of Russia will be decided by the success or failure of Ukraine,” said Carl Bildt, the former Swedish foreign minister and prime minister and a veteran of European affairs.
“History will judge the West in 2015 as much, or more, by what it does for Ukraine as by what it does to Russia,” said Lawrence H. Summers, the former United States Treasury secretary, now at Harvard University.
Jack Ewing contributed reporting.
