Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Sochi has long served as Vladimir Putin’s stage for foreign guests, the Black Sea resort he treated as a second working capital.
The Kremlin’s flagship policy conference, the Valdai Discussion Club, has been quietly moved away from the coast for its 2026 edition.
Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO), the agency guarding the president, insisted on the change after Ukrainian long-range strikes reached deeper into the country, The Financial Times reported.
The 23rd Annual Meeting will now run from September 28 through October 1 in the Moscow region, according to the club’s own announcement, which lists 120 participants from 40 countries under the theme “Responsibility for the Future: Limits of the Possible, or Limitless Possibilities?”
Invitations initially sent out for Sochi were amended in late August, according to the Financial Times.
Sochi drone attack sharpened the concern
Six days before the FT report, on the evening of September 9, Ukrainian sea drones struck the Sochi waterfront during a concert by singer Tatiana Bulanova at the Festivalny House of Culture.
Explosions occurred within roughly 300 meters of beachgoers, and the audience was evacuated. According to Russian authorities, eight people were injured, with various outlets reporting as many as 30 injured.
Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a terrorism case, and Mayor Andrei Proshunin told residents to shelter and stay away from crowded places.
Putin’s own Sochi visits have collapsed
The venue shift lines up with a broader pattern. By journalists’ count cited by the FT, Putin has been to Sochi only twice in the past two years, most recently in October 2025 for the previous Valdai meeting. In 2021, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, he visited the city 24 times.
Around his Bocharov Ruchey residence in Sochi, the FSO is building a three-square-kilometer security zone covering both land and sea.
Putin also moved to expand the FSO’s central staff for the fourth time since 2022, under a draft decree reported by Novaya Gazeta Europe at the end of June 2026 that raises the roster from 785 to 812 positions, effective July 1.
The four-day forum opens September 28 in the Moscow region.
