The club announced the venue change on September 14. Its website states that the XXIII Annual Meeting will be held from September 28 to October 1 in the Moscow region, under the theme "Responsibility for the Future: The Limits of the Possible or Possibilities Without Limit?" The 120 guests originally received invitations naming Sochi and were notified of the move in August.
The decision was made at the insistence of the presidential security service (FSO) because of the threat of Ukrainian strikes, the Financial Times reported, citing four sources familiar with the situation. The Kremlin and the forum's organizers did not respond to the newspaper's requests for comment.
Putin typically takes part in the club's meetings about once a year. He last traveled to Sochi for a Valdai conference that ended in early October 2025. Over the past two years, according to the FT's count, the president visited the region twice a year, compared with 24 times in 2021, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces regularly strike targets on Russia's Black Sea coast. On the evening of September 9, Ukrainian naval drones were reported to have attacked the Sochi embankment, injuring about 30 people. On August 9, drones hit a position of an S-400 Triumf air defense system in Gelendzhik, according to Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. On September 4, a division of an S-300 or S-400 system near the settlement of Sirius was struck, Astra reported.
As of September 10, 170 people had been killed or injured in Ukrainian attacks on the Black Sea coast of the Krasnodar region since the start of May, according to a count by Agentstvo. Over the whole of last year, 37 people were killed in similar attacks, according to the same data.
The Valdai Club was founded in 2004 by several experts, including the political scientist Sergei Karaganov. Its meetings are attended by Russian officials, foreign politicians and journalists.