In May, the Brazilian president was suspended from office for 180 days after the Senate voted to start the impeachment process against her on accusations that she concealed growing budget deficit ahead of the 2014 re-election.
"I must say that the creation of BRICS has very much frightened a number of states, and we know this. To think that this bloc of countries would collapse means to commit a strategic and an unforgivable geopolitical error…I am sure that those who want to seize power in Brazil have no understanding of the world order. I am assuming they have stalled in the 1980s or even 1970s in terms of their perception of the world," Rousseff said in an interview with the Russian Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.
Brazil's economy has been facing growing problems with a shrinking GDP, a rising budget deficit and increasing unemployment. Brazil's annual GDP growth rate fell to —5.4 percent in the first quarter of 2016 after hitting —5.9 percent in late 2015, which is the worst figure in decades, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.
