Ukraine makes its pitch to the world elite where Russia once held court.

DAVOS, Switzerland — For years, Russians made the Alpine ski resort of Davos their fur-lined playground during the World Economic Forum. They rented lavish chalets, threw bacchanalian parties, and welcomed V.I.P. guests to the Russia House, where they served chilled vodka and talked business.

Now, Russia is a pariah at this gathering in Switzerland — its diplomats disinvited, its oligarchs blacklisted, and the Russia House converted by a wealthy Ukrainian businessman into “Russian War Crimes House.” In place of the vodka is a harrowing photo exhibition of wartime atrocities.

The Russian War Crimes House is the centerpiece of a determined campaign by Ukraine to keep the war at the top of the agenda at this annual conclave of politicians and corporate chieftains. The goal is to rally an elite crowd, which typically spends the week opining on arcane concepts like stakeholder capitalism, to commit to the real-world business of arming and rebuilding Ukraine.

“I wish every one of you wakes up in the morning with this on their mind: ‘What have I done for Ukraine today?’” President Volodymyr Zelensky said by video from Kyiv to an audience that gave him an un-Davos-like standing ovation.

Mr. Zelensky encouraged businesses to flee Russia to set up shop in Ukraine, promising a postwar environment scrubbed of corruption and untainted by association with “war crimes.” He said he had sent a delegation of officials to Switzerland, who were available to “inform all of you on the prospects for business.”

If the president’s words had the ring of a chamber of commerce pitch, they nevertheless lent the World Economic Forum a degree of gravity it has lacked in recent years, even as politicians and businesspeople have pledged to tackle weighty issues like climate change and income inequality.

Soon after Mr. Zelensky’s speech, the Klitschko brothers — Wladimir, a two-time heavyweight boxing champion, and Vitali, also a heavyweight champion, who now serves as mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital — appeared before a different audience to speak about the grim realities of war. They contrasted it with Davos, where the spring sun glinted off snow-capped peaks and fields bloomed with wildflowers.

The brothers, too, made an appeal for Western support, arguing that Ukraine’s battle to save its country was part of a broader global struggle against the forces of tyranny. “We’re fighting for every one of you,” Vitali Klitschko said, while his brother said, “This war is going to knock on all our doors.”

Both brothers said the war had settled into a grinding struggle, which Wladimir Klitschko said could play to Ukraine’s advantage, provided the West did not flag in its support. “I’ve learned one thing,” he said, as the holder of the longest cumulative reign as heavyweight champion: “Endurance beats talent.”

Ukraine has long had a visible presence in Davos, thanks to the enterprising efforts of Victor Pinchuk, a politically connected Ukrainian tycoon who has cultivated high-profile friends like former President Bill Clinton and the former British prime minister, Tony Blair. Mr. Pinchuk has long organized a popular Ukrainian breakfast, which draws speakers like former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation is one of the sponsors of Ukraine House, which sits across the promenade from the erstwhile Russia House. The roots of Mr. Pinchuk’s wealth are not dissimilar from those of the Russian oligarchs who once held court in Davos. But he has positioned himself firmly alongside Mr. Zelensky and against President Vladimir V. Putin, not least through his rebranding of the Russian War Crimes House.

Mr. Pinchuk’s foundation rented the building after it was vacated by the Russians, at the invitation of the World Economic Forum, which has taken an uncharacteristically firm stand in denouncing the invasion and cutting its ties to Russia.

The director of Mr. Pinchuk’s contemporary art museum in Kyiv, Bjorn Geldhof, worked with a journalism association in Ukraine to collect 4,683 images of civilians killed in the war. Some are displayed on their own; others are part of a video montage in which the images flash by in rapid succession.

That was intentional, Mr. Geldhof said: Some of the scenes are so graphic and grisly that lingering on them could have made viewers queasy. “There is a moment when compassion turns into disgust,” he said.

The exhibition includes a map that pinpoints civilian deaths throughout the country, based on reports from journalists and prosecutors. Mr. Geldhof also collaborated with Ukraine’s foreign ministry, and the project has support at the highest level of the government: Mr. Zelensky mentioned it in his address on Monday.

“This became an idea to present an image of Russia that it does not present of itself,” Mr. Geldhof said. “So it is still kind of Russia House.”

Still, at a conference that has often looked past the human rights records of business-friendly countries, the Russian War Crimes House is a jarring presence. Just down the street is a “youth majlis,” sponsored by a foundation linked to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Posters promoting the Saudi kingdom as a destination for investors hang from several nearby buildings.

Before the invasion, wealthy Russians were welcome at Davos. In 2020, Andrey Kostin, the head of Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB, invited guests to lunch at a lavish ski chalet overlooking Davos.

The bashes thrown by Oleg Deripaska, another well-connected oligarch, were even more notorious. At one, he imported Cossack dancers and served caviar in giant bowls, washed down with magnum bottles of Dom Pérignon champagne. Entertainment was provided by the pop singer Enrique Iglesias.

When Russia came up at this year’s conference, it was in the context of cruelty and suffering. At a panel at the Russian War Crimes House, Lyudmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, somberly listed Russian wartime atrocities, among them the rape of infants. Some in the audience wiped their eyes; many wore yellow-and-blue wristbands or lapel pins with the Ukrainian flag.

“It’s a very appropriate renaming of the institution,” said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, who was on the panel. “This is the way that the Russian military operates when it faces resistance: It harms civilians under the theory known as total war.”