Outcast country status, terrorist country status, "toxic regime", sanctions, economic collapse, loss of "second army" status, "fake" status - about many branches of russia and russia as a whole, loss of a place in international space, and many other extremely negative events - is this your strengthening?
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Especially the so-called "friends of russia" are two camps:
1. The rogue countries that want to benefit from Russia (Iran, North Korea, etc.). Here it's simple, "like-minded befriends like-minded".
2. the "kites", who see a slowly dying "superpower", from which now we can "rip something off" before it starts to smell like dead meat and no one needs it. China and India are getting oil for a penny. In addition to the price, they simply "cheat" Russia out of money (the facts are in the public domain - very easy to find). Because they understand that russia has NO CHOICE! And russia sells off its last reserves for pennies... But resources are not limitless, the economy is falling apart, especially without access to western technology... And if the USSR collapsed for more than 10 years, with a more powerful and self-sufficient economy, the term of Russia is much shorter. Just remember that the real sanctions only work for 9 months.
That's why they are actively selling gold. Yes I will answer the question "this is how russia buys gold" beforehand. Yes it does, but it buys it even cheaper than it sells it at a dumping price. It buys a lot of domestically produced gold (i.e., no currency for it), gets gold from the seized mines and factories, which in some African countries have fallen into the hands of the Wagner PMC. By the way, this grouping was created precisely to seize the resources of some African countries, to fill, for pennies, Russia's gold reserves ...