Ukraine’s strikes expose global energy war: St Petersburg oil hub targeted amid Russia’s elite Davos-style forum on extractive economies
Original framing: “Ukraine attacks St Petersburg as Russia hosts its own ‘Davos’” — Al Jazeera
The irony of a Davos-style forum in a city targeted by airstrikes—symbolizing the absurdity of elite gatherings in war zones—invokes the trickster figure of Hermes, god of both commerce and theft. The framing of Ukraine’s strikes as 'unprovoked' ignores the West’s own history of resource wars, from Iraq to Libya, where 'humanitarian intervention' masked extractive motives. The trickster here is the oil itself: a substance that fuels both war and peace, prosperity and ruin, revealing the absurdity of a system that commodifies life.
The St Petersburg strikes are not merely a military escalation but a symptom of a global energy war where fossil fuel infrastructure is both weapon and battleground.
The Davos-style forum in Russia exemplifies the entrenchment of extractive capitalism, while Ukraine’s targeting of oil facilities reflects the desperation of a nation caught between imperial ambitions and its own resource dependencies. This conflict is part of a longer historical arc, from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s early 20th-century exploits to the post-Soviet privatization of Russian oil, where energy has always been a tool of control. Indigenous Siberian communities and frontline Ukrainian civilians bear the brunt of this system, yet their voices are excluded from elite narratives that frame the crisis as a binary between 'aggressor' and 'defender.' The solution lies in demilitarizing energy infrastructure, accelerating just transitions, and centering marginalized perspectives in governance—challenges that require dismantling the very systems that have prolonged this war.