🇷🇺 🥇 RUSSIA SELLS GOLD AND BLOCKS EXPORTS: THE STRATEGY BEHIND THE APPARENT PARADOX 🥇🇷🇺
Russia has sold physical gold from the central bank's reserves for the first time in 25 years, while Putin has banned the export of refined bars over 100 grams.
A move that seems contradictory, but actually reveals a precise financial mechanism.
Between January and February 2026, the Russian Central Bank sold about 500,000 ounces (about 15 tons), reducing reserves to a four-year low.
This is not a sale driven by crisis, but by operational necessity: Russia accumulates yuan through trade with China, but cannot easily use them to finance domestic spending, including military expenditures.
Today, 80-90% of trade between Russia and China is conducted in yuan or rubles.
However, the banking system makes it increasingly difficult to convert yuan into rubles, also due to sanctions and Chinese controls. The result is an excess of unusable yuan internally.
Gold then becomes the solution.
The central bank sells bars on the domestic market, collects rubles, and directly finances the state budget without creating inflation or depending on the banking system.
The export ban completes the strategy: it keeps gold within the country and prevents capital flight.
In this way, Russia builds a dual system where yuan is used for foreign trade and gold for domestic liquidity.
It is not panic, but monetary engineering under geopolitical pressure.