What evidence do you have that it was in fact them? Some obscure Russian economist made a claim completely out of the blue (read, straight out of his ass) and half the forum went wild with Russia allegedly buying a few coins.
The rumors came when we didn't have any real hope of any price rise for the short term, so people clung to anything and hoped for the best making headlines out of anything insignificant, Russia, Samsung, Amazon,BMW, etc etc and now that we have a rise thy think they nailed at least one of it
Then it should work in reverse as well
That is, when the price falls back to February levels (down to 3.5k or below), people will be desperately looking for another explanation and most certainly someone will come up with the speculation of Russia selling their stash of bitcoins for the need of cash (or whatever other reason would feel plausible at the moment). The bottom line is that if something goes right, thank Russians for that, otherwise blame them
If Russia bought Bitcoins for 10 billion dollars, there would be a sharp jump in prices in the cryptocurrency market. However, if they buy there periodically and in small batches, this may explain the slow and steady rise of the market in recent times. The Russian government does not want to admit that it is significantly affected by international sanctions, and it is likely that the acquisition of bitcoins will occur in secret. However, it will be very useful for the cryptocurrency market.
Remember that if they bought, they'd buy over-the-counter direct from a miner, instead of using exchanges. So they'd likely not move the price much
Did anyone suggest they could just buy a few miners and mine a couple bitcoins themselves instead of buying them?