This September, Republic of \u0421ongo will host the second rhythmic gymnastics tournament in honor of alina kabaeva.<\/p>\n
\u25ab\ufe0f Organizers present it as an important sporting and cultural event for the region, and athlete preparation included internships at the \u201cheavenly grace\u201d academy in sochi. Within a year, the number of girls practicing rhythmic gymnastics in Congo has increased fivefold, and new clubs have opened in several cities across the country.<\/p>\n
\u25ab\ufe0f This kremlin initiative is promoted as a \u201cbridge of friendship\u201d and youth cooperation abroad. In reality, however, such projects are used for propaganda and to build a positive image of russia internationally, while distracting attention from the country\u2019s real social and economic problems.<\/p>\n
While moscow tries to work with \u201csports youth\u201d abroad, it is sharply reducing spending on sports domestically. The 2025 budget is set to be \u201crevised\u201d so that about 2 trillion rubles ($25.6 billion) will be redirected to war efforts and security services at the expense of social programs, sports, and infrastructure. War spending already makes up 40% of russia\u2019s entire budget, and the deficit has reached a record 4.88 trillion rubles ($61.5 billion).<\/p>\n
\u25ab\ufe0f russia is actively using sports and cultural initiatives to strengthen its influence in Africa, where it is trying to establish itself through economic and educational projects, \u201crussian houses,\u201d and other forms of soft power.<\/p>\n
russia\u2019s focus on Africa is driven by access to resources and the region\u2019s strategic importance. Deploying \u201cheavy artillery\u201d in the form of alina kabaeva underscores the kremlin\u2019s serious intentions to shape a positive image of russia and influence the youth of african countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This September, Republic of \u0421ongo will host the second rhythmic gymnastics tournament in honor of alina kabaeva. \u25ab\ufe0f Organizers present it as an important sporting and cultural event for the region, and athlete preparation included internships at the \u201cheavenly grace\u201d academy in sochi. Within a year, the number of girls practicing rhythmic gymnastics in Congo…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":933,"footnotes":""},"categories":[933],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-south"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cpd.gov.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}