Russia gold buying accelerated in October with the Russian central bank buying a very large 48 metric tonnes or 1.3 million ounces of gold bullion.
This is the largest addition of gold to the Russian monetary reserves since 1998 and could be seen as a parting 'gift' by Prime Minister Putin to his rival ex-President Obama.
The Russian central bank gold purchase is the biggest monthly gold purchase of this millennium.
Submitted by Peter Korzun via Strategic-Culture.org,
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on November 20 that Turkey did not need to join the European Union «at all costs». Instead, it could become part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact. The Turkish leader said he had already discussed the idea with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Russia say they have evidence that US-backed rebels have been using chemical weapons against Syrians in Aleppo and claim the UN are doing nothing about it. Experts from the Russian Defense Ministry have evidence that terrorists used chlorine and white phosphorus in Area ‘1070’ in the southwestern suburbs of Aleppo. “Russian specialists found that militants in east Aleppo used ammunition with poisonous substances, with the ammo targeting west Aleppo. The collected samples leave no doubt that it’s a toxic agent,” Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference.
Shortly after Russia admitted that it was moving nuclear-capable rockets to the exclave of Kaliningrad in explicit retaliation for NATO encroachment on its borders, something it had not done until today, another old hotzone has flared up again when moments ago the Russian military reported that Ukranian security operatives have abducted two Russian servicemen in Crimea, and are attempting to press criminal charges against them, the Russian military is reporting.
While the detente between Russia and US president-elect Donald Trump could not have come at a more tense time, the Kremlin appears to be accelerating its head-on collision course with NATO, and as a highly placed defense official said on Monday, Moscow will deploy S-400 surface-to-air missiles and nuclear-capable Iskander systems in the exclave of Kaliningrad in retaliation for NATO deployments, confirming previous media reports of Russian intentions to once again blanket central Europe with potential nuclear ICBM coverage.