THE Russians are coming. London is opening its arms this weekend to welcome an influx of 1,500 rich people flying in from Moscow and St Petersburg.

An invasion that 50 years ago would be met with force is being greeted with bear hugs and business cards.

Hatton Garden jewellers are taking sample cases of diamonds to the visitors’ hotels, Mayfair nightclubs are devoting whole evenings to them and Bond Street designers are modelling their latest fashions.

Rolls-Royce, which has just opened a new showroom at No 1 Red Square, Moscow, is polishing its latest models for inspection in London and Moët is uncorking the champagne as official vintner to the visit.

The occasion is the seventh annual Russian economic forum to be held in Britain. It is a talking shop for oligarchs, ministers from Vladimir Putin’s government and executives from the top companies on the Moscow stock exchange.

When the seminars are not in session, it is time to party and to shop. The top London stores are predicting their biggest bonanza since the January sales. Between them the Russians are expected to spend £15m in the capital. For the rich Russians, April in London has become as much a part of their “season” as the winter skiing in Courchevel.

The forum is the brainchild of Sergei Kolushev, a Russian who came to London in 1990 with a plan to promote British companies in Russia but then realised it was his homeland that needed support.

“I wanted to create the biggest event in the world to help others understand Russia,” he said last week.

Private jets were queueing to land over Luton airport on Friday as the first arrivals flew in; 200 of them paid £575 each for a lunch and an executive seat at Chelsea’s home game against Everton yesterday, as paying guests of Roman Abramovich, billionaire owner of the London football club.

Tonight it is the wives’ turn to show off their diamonds and dresses at Russian Rhapsody, a musical event being held at the Natural History Museum.

The guests will include Stephen Webster, Madonna’s favourite jeweller, and his Russian wife Anastasia, Nicky Clarke, the hair stylist, and Karl Lagerfeld, Ozwald Boateng and Matthew Williamson, the fashion designers.

Tomorrow it’s gloves off. While delegates listen to speakers such as Alexander Zhukov, the Russian deputy prime minister, Aleksei Kudrin, the finance minister, and Anatoly Chubais, another former minister who heads Russia’s biggest electricity company, their wives and girlfriends will be targeted by London’s top stores, designers and estate agents.

The neon pink and white leather walls of Sketch, one of Mayfair’s trendiest bars, will be closed to all but Russian visitors and security guards as Lev Leviev, an Israeli jeweller, shows off rare white diamonds and rings priced at between £100,000 and £1.5m.

The Knightsbridge, a new complex of apartments costing up to £25m each in “Little Moscow” around Harrods, has delivered invitations to the hotel rooms of 55 of the richest Russians to view the development.

Boris Pastukhov, founder of an insurance company, said: “I will be dining at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant in Chelsea. The English restaurants have improved greatly over the past 10 years.”

Additional reporting: Anna Mikhailova

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