- WIADOMOŚCI
A shake-up in the Russian treasury. Putin is selling gold to fund the war
Over the last 10 months, the Russian central bank has sold approximately 62 tonnes of gold. As reported by the Ukrainian portal UNN, the budget deficit in 2026 could rise to 7.3 trillion roubles.
In September 2026, Russian gold reserves fell by 6.2 tonnes, and the total volume of reserves decreased to 72.8 million troy ounces. This is the lowest level since the end of 2019.
Russian Gold Headed to China
According to information provided by Reuters, the sale of gold is linked to the use of assets from the Russian sovereign wealth fund, the National Wealth Fund (NWF), where profits from oil and gas sales have been accumulated since 2008.
Although the NWF was initially intended to stabilise the Russian economy and support the pension system, for years the fund has supported the financing of the war against Ukraine and covered Russia’s growing budget deficit.
Between 2022 and 2026, the fund’s liquid assets fell from over $113 billion to approximately $52 billion, and gold reserves shrank by over 70 per cent.
As reported by the UNN portal, China is simultaneously increasing its purchases of Russian gold. From January to July, approximately 100 tonnes of the bullion were imported from Russia via Hong Kong – three times more than in the same period last year.
According to estimates by the Financial Times, Russian gold worth $35 billion has been exported through Hong Kong since the start of the full-scale war in 2022. As the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) noted as early as 2022, following the imposition of Western sanctions, Moscow lost access to approximately 60 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves frozen in Western banks. Consequently, the Central Bank of Russia and the National Wealth Fund were forced to base their liquidity on gold.
GI-TOC analysts emphasise that the sale of gold allows Russia to bypass Western digital financial networks (including the SWIFT system) and finance the war in Ukraine in an unregistered manner in cooperation with countries such as China.
In turn, experts from the American Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs confirm that there has been a drastic increase in Russia’s dependence on Asian markets. In the first seven months of this year alone, deliveries of Russian gold to Hong Kong reached nearly 100 tonnes – representing almost three times the volume from the corresponding period last year.
