As Brazil is emerging as the latest global COVID-19 epicenter, Rio de Janeiro – the country's second hardest-hit city after Sao Paulo is receiving tons of donated and purchased medical equipment from China

Over the last five years cooperation in science, technology and innovation (STI) within BRICS has been dynamically evolving and has reached new frontiers not least because of the leading role of the Russian Federation. Indeed, the collaboration of five countries in the area of science, technology and innovation can be considered as a driving force for cooperation within BRICS

In 2015 Russia initiated adoption of the Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership. The document was drawn up because, with the existing differences in geography, history and evolution, the common interests of the BRICS countries were primarily political, while their foreign-trade and investment relations were on a fairly modest scale

Brazil's Embraer SA said that China and India could be potential new partners, following a Reuters report last week that said those two countries as well as Russia were interested in the planemaker's commercial jets division

The BRICS group was conceived as virtual reality. As something discussed by economists and international politics experts. Although the countries have been interacting with one another for centuries. And the real basis of their multilateral interaction was already there in the shape of the famous Russia-India-China triangle brought into circulation by Evgeny Primakov. The transformation of BRICS into an influential international format went through several stages, and at each stage the role of experts was paramount

Today, during the coronavirus epidemic of 2020, we are seeing coordination of actions of individual countries on the most important issues for the implementation of their national interests. The BRICS countries are interested in such coordination – in order to strengthen the positions of each member of the association, for the sake of their own stability in the growing chaos, as well as to strengthen the voice of developing countries in general