The Kremlin Forum Where Candace Owens Will Share Stage With the Architect of Russia's Anti-West Warfare Doctrine
Every partner is sanctioned. Every co-panelist is sanctioned. The headlining ideologue wrote the Russian military's blueprint for breaking America — and US Treasury just sanctioned his AI deepfake op.
On June 4, “conservative” commentator Candace Owens is scheduled to speak on a panel at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), an annual gathering organized under the auspices of President Vladimir Putin by the Roscongress Foundation. Owens initially described the trip as a “family vacation” before researcher Ryan Mauro revealed her speaking role, and cited what he described as "leaked documents" showing SPIEF panels operate as "recruitment pipelines" for foreign collaborators inside what he called a "state-directed soft power program."
The panel itself is moderated by an EU-sanctioned Russian propagandist and features three additional Kremlin officials sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and/or the European Union. Sharing the broader SPIEF speaker roster is Aleksandr Dugin — the Russian ideologue whose 1997 military doctrine explicitly prescribes destabilizing the United States through racial conflict and isolationism, and whose own Moscow-based organization the U.S. government sanctioned in December 2024 for running a Russian intelligence-funded AI deepfake operation targeting the 2024 American election.
A review by Crosscurrents found that SPIEF’s partner architecture is built around sanctioned Russian state power: major state banks, defense-linked financiers, Kremlin-connected executives, and technology firms Western governments have sanctioned and tied to Russia’s intelligence and war machinery. The story isn’t (just) that Owens accepted an invitation. It’s the architecture of the operation that invited her.
The Panel: “Big Family, Big Reach”
Owens’ panel is titled “Big Family, Big Reach: New Demographics and Narratives for Media Managers.” The session description openly asks how to structure the financial mechanism for ideological content distribution: “What is more effective: direct financial payments and targeted assistance or a comprehensive ecosystem?”
The moderator, Maria Sittel, was sanctioned by the EU Council in January 2026 for “information manipulation activities” targeting European audiences. Her co-panelists include Alexander Zharov, the OFAC-sanctioned former head of Roskomnadzor and current CEO of Gazprom-Media (SPIEF’s General Media Partner); Yulia Baranovskaya, EU-sanctioned for funding Russia’s war effort and justifying the forced deportation of Ukrainian children; and Anna Kuznetsova, OFAC-sanctioned Deputy Chair of Russia’s State Duma.
The format isn’t new — SPIEF 2025 hosted a near-identical session titled “The Role of the State and the Media in Shaping Worldviews and Values,” where TASS Director General Andrey Kondrashov declared “traditional values are what unite us” in explicit wartime framing.
Mauro, citing his sourcing on the forum's internal structure, described SPIEF's Organizing Committee as containing "Putin's top advisors and senior intel officials," and identified the Owens panel as fitting the documented pattern: panels structured to develop "media partnerships with foreign influencers."
The Dugin Doctrine
Aleksandr Dugin, who is also speaking at the event, is not a fringe philosopher. His 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics was used as a textbook at the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military, drafted with the head of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s International Department. Dugin divides civilizations into two categories: “thalassocracies” — the United States, Western Europe, and Protestant societies — which he defines as the civilizational enemy that must be destroyed, and “tellurocracies” — Russia, Shia Iran, and (in his updated framework) China — which he positions as the civilizational alliance. His prescription for the US is explicit — Russia should:
“introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements,” while simultaneously “support[ing] isolationist tendencies in American politics.”
In December 2024, OFAC sanctioned Dugin’s Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE) for operationalizing this doctrine — running a GRU-funded operation that used generative AI to produce deepfakes targeting the 2024 US election, distributed across a network of “at least 100 websites” designed to imitate legitimate American news outlets.
In a 2024 video surfaced by Mauro and researcher Trevor Loudon, Dugin himself defined the forum's purpose in his own words: SPIEF, he said, "will be precisely the tool — and maybe one of the most important tools — for the promotion of multipolarity" — i.e., the explicit instrument for dismantling American global influence, not an economic conference.
The Partner Architecture
Every funder of SPIEF 2026 is either a U.S., EU, or UK-sanctioned Russian state entity or it’s subsidiaries/executives are. The forum’s Title Partner VEB.RF is chaired by UK-sanctioned former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov. The co-Title Partner Rosatom is run by Alexey Likhachev, who personally oversees the Russian occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia.
The Gigapartner is Sber, whose CEO Herman Gref was designated by Treasury as a “close Putin associate.” The General Sponsor is VTB Bank, whose CEO Andrey Kostin was criminally indicted by the US Department of Justice in February 2024 for sanctions evasion and money laundering involving an Aspen mansion.
General Partner PSB Bank, designated by Treasury as Russia’s official “defense bank“ financing missile production, is run by Pyotr Fradkov — son of former SVR foreign intelligence chief Mikhail Fradkov. The forum’s Innovation Partner is Positive Technologies, which the US Treasury designated in 2021 specifically for using its conventions as “recruiting events for the FSB and GRU.”
The Civilizational Coalition
SPIEF 2026 convenes the operational form of Dugin’s tellurocratic alliance. A dedicated session implements the 20-year Russia-Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty signed in January 2025. Over 1,000 Chinese delegates will attend, with the Russia-China business dialogue moderated by OFAC-sanctioned oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
The CCP’s state media conglomerate China Media Group — answering directly to the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee — was signed as an official information partner, fused at the broadcast level with Russian state media. North Korea’s Minister of External Economic Relations Yun Jong Ho — the official who chairs the DPRK-Russia trade cooperation committee that has produced North Korean troops fighting in Kursk — is leading the official DPRK delegation.
The Operation
In September 2024, the U.S. Justice Department indicted two Russia Today employees for funneling $10 million through Tenet Media to pay American right-wing influencers to produce pro-Kremlin “family values” content. RT — the same sanctioned outlet — is now the General International News Partner of SPIEF 2026.
The Owens panel’s framing, its co-panelists, and its placement inside an entirely sanctioned partner architecture is not a coincidence of programming. The structure echoes the same influence architecture U.S. authorities described in the RT/Tenet case: sanctioned Russian media entities, ideological messaging aimed at Western audiences, and the use of foreign voices to launder Kremlin-aligned narratives into domestic political debates. The man whose doctrine animates it remains the named architect of Russia’s psychological war against the West — and he will be in the same building.