Dr. Barek Kaiser

In June, night does not fall in Saint Petersburg. The clock reads eleven, yet twilight still clings to the sky. Golden reflections spread over the Neva’s waters. The city’s bustle shows no sign of stopping. It was under this strange light that the 2026 Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum took place. The organizers put the natural daylight to brilliant use: after daytime political and economic sessions, evening networking carried on in that mysterious, sweet glow. I flew from Dhaka on May 31, bound for Russia’s cultural capital, Saint Petersburg. Peter the Great once wanted this city to be Europe’s window. I attended the forum as one of five members of an academic delegation from Bangladesh. We were selected under the “New Generation” program led by Alexandra Khlevnoy, director of the Russian House in Dhaka. The five invitees from Bangladesh were: Syed Raihan Ul Islam and Dr. Md. Abdul Kabil Khan from Daffodil International University; Md. Towhid Bin Shafi and Sakib Asad Khan from the Canadian University of Bangladesh, and Dr. Barek Kaiser from the University of Development Alternative. We represented not only our universities but the country’s entire higher-education sector. We returned from Russia on June 8. Those nine days felt like a school of experience. What we saw, heard, and understood is more than a travel story; it is a record of a changing world and of the lessons that matter most. This year’s forum included representatives from 142 countries. More than 24,000 people attended in person. That number is more than a statistic; it is a message.

Nearly three-quarters of the world’s countries sat under the same roof, searching for the same answer: how do we restore stability to this restless, divided, crisis-prone world? Remarkably, for the first time in more than a decade, a US delegation joined the forum. Western countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Austria were present. BRICS nations, Saudi Arabia, countries from the Middle East, and the Global Southall sat at the same discussion table. That scene says this much: the world now recognizes that pragmatic dialogue is necessary beyond ideological divides. The forum’s theme was “Pragmatic Dialogue: The Path to a Stable Future.” It was not merely a slogan; in today’s fractured world, it is an urgent message.

Three words repeatedly rose to the center of that message: artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and united effort. We live in a time when climate change, food insecurity, energy shortages, technology-driven inequality, and geopolitical conflict have all surged together. None of these crises is the sol