Anton Gerashchenko
@Gerashchenko_en
Russia has started selling off its gold reserves for the first time to pay for the war.
The Bank of Russia has, for the first time, started real sales of physical gold from its reserves as part of the Finance Ministry’s operations to fund the state budget.
The Central Bank has begun to "mirror" the gold transactions of the National Wealth Fund (NWF) carried out by the government, the regulator’s press service reported.
These are the NWF gold sales the Finance Ministry has been conducting in recent years. Until recently, these operations were virtual: the government did not sell the precious metal on the market but instead sold it to the Central Bank, effectively shifting the gold "from one pocket to another." As a result, the bullion remained part of Russia’s gold reserves, which exceed 2.3 thousand tonnes - the fifth-largest in the world.
Now the situation has changed: the Central Bank has begun conducting real operations involving the sale of physical gold, similar to how Chinese yuan from the NWF are already being traded.
"Since the liquidity of the domestic gold market has increased in recent years, in connection with the implementation of the budget rule and other NWF operations, the Bank of Russia carries out these equivalent market operations not only by buying and selling yuan for rubles, but also partly by buying and selling gold," the Central Bank explained. It did not specify when exactly the gold sales began or their volume.
Before the war, the NWF held 405.7 tonnes of gold. Since then, the Finance Ministry has sold off 57% of that stockpile - 232.6 tonnes - to patch budget holes. As a result, by 1 November 2025, the fund’s gold holdings had fallen to 173.1 tonnes.
The total volume of the NWF’s liquid assets - which include gold and Chinese yuan - has shrunk by 55%, from $113.5 billion to $51.6 billion.
Relative to GDP, the fund’s unspent reserves have fallen fourfold - 1.9% of GDP, compared to 7.3% before the war.
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