All right, Alexander, let's talk about Putin's recent trip to Mongolia, and then let's also discuss his recent appearance at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

And these two trips appear to be Russia's way of preparing for the BRICS summit in Kazan.

We did get a lot of news about BRICS applications, countries wanting to apply to enter BRICS over the past couple of weeks.

Turkey, Malaysia, Azerbaijan, I believe has formally applied as well.

And I may even be missing some countries.

Algeria entered the BRICS Development Bank.

So a lot of activity taking place as far as entering BRICS while Putin is on these trips to Mongolia,

and then he attends the Eastern Economic Forum.

And China also hosted a forum and event with African nations as well.

So obviously they are preparing.

The current BRICs members are preparing for the big summit in

Kazan, I believe in October. Absolutely. And importantly, one, a very senior Chinese official also

attended this meeting in Vladivostok, the Boris and Economic Forum, which Putin, of course, was present at.

Now, before I discuss the BRICS aspect, I think it's important. Just one point I wanted to make is that Putin is showing, has shown a greater interest in developing the far east of Russia in developing this area,

Vladivostok, Habarovsk, all these regions in the far east than any other Russian leader

since the time of Nicholas II. Nicholas, it's our Nicholas the Second. It's not a little known fact, but he took a very, very great

interest in the far east of Russia, of course.

It was just the time when the Russians had built the trans-Siberian railway.

He was very, very interested in the far east.

He visited, he traveled to Japan before he became emperor.

He was never able, obviously, to follow through.

Communications and transport were very different at that time.

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