Russia Has Started Selling Off Gold Reserves For The First Time

There's not enough money for the war.

The Bank of Russia for the first time started real sales of physical gold from reserves within the framework of the Ministry of Finance's operations to finance the state budget.

The Central Bank has started "mirroring" the transactions with gold of the National Welfare Fund conducted by the government, the regulator's press service told Interfax.

The matter concerns sales of gold from the National Welfare Fund, which the Ministry of Finance has been conducting in recent years. Until recently, these transactions were virtual: the government sold the precious metal not on the market, but to the Central Bank, de facto transferring the gold reserve "from pocket to pocket". As a result, the bullion bars remained as part of the country's gold reserves, which exceed 2.3 thousand tons and are the fifth largest in the world.

Now the situation has changed: the Central Bank began to conduct real operations to sell physical gold, as it is already done with Chinese yuan from the National Wealth Fund.

"Since the liquidity of the domestic gold market has increased in recent years, in connection with the implementation of the budget rule and other operations of the National Wealth Fund, the Bank of Russia performs the above equivalent operations in the domestic market not only by buying and selling yuan for rubles, but also partially by buying and selling gold," the Central Bank explained. The Central Bank did not specify when gold sales started and in what volume.

Before the war started, the National Wealth Fund had accumulated 405.7 tons of gold. Since then, the Finance Ministry has sold off 57% of this stockpile, or 232.6 tons, to patch budget holes. As a result, as of November 1, 2025, the amount of gold in the fund dropped to 173.1 tons The total amount of liquid assets in the National National Wealth Fund, which in addition to gold includes Chinese yuan, decreased by 55% - from $113.5 billion to $51.6 billion. In relation to GDP, the unspent reserves of the fund became four times smaller - 1.9% of GDP against 7.3% of GDP before the war.

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