Sept. 7—At today’s plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, President Vladimir Putin was the featured speaker and in a real tour de force, laid out an exciting and very optimistic perspective for the development of Russia’s Far East and the Asia-Pacific region more broadly. This stood in marked contrast to his portrait of the pessimism and despair of the Western world, the United States and Western Europe—and particularly Europe—which is experiencing a dire energy and economic crisis as a result of imposing sanctions on Russia at the U.S. behest. While Russia still faces some economic problems that it must deal with and takes seriously, Putin said, its economy is in the process of stabilizing, and is seeing a gradual decline of inflation and unemployment.