Russia’s central bank sold off physical gold for the tenth month in a row in September, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SZRU). Holdings dropped by 6.2 metric tons to 2,260, the lowest level since late 2019. Since December 2025 the stockpile has shrunk by about 62 metric tons, or 2.7%.
That is the opposite of the picture the headline on this story once painted. Gold is being drawn down, not built up.
A budget under strain
SZRU says the Kremlin is dipping into saved money because the budget deficit keeps widening. Oil and gas revenues are falling. Spending, much of it on the war against Ukraine, stays high.
The mechanism is simple. The Finance Ministry sells foreign currency and gold from the National Wealth Fund to the Central Bank and gets rubles in return. The central bank then makes matching transactions on the domestic market, using Chinese yuan and gold.
The dollar value of the gold fell from $333.5 billion in September to $301.6 billion in October. SZRU said that reflected both the smaller physical holdings and changes in market prices and asset valuations.
Reserves that look bigger than they are
Russia’s international reserves stood at an estimated $723.5 billion on October 9, down $45.5 billion, or 5.9%, from the start of September. The headline number overstates what Moscow can spend. Since 2022, sanctions have frozen a large share of the central bank’s foreign assets, so gold held at home and assets denominated in yuan are among the few resources it can reach freely.
Selling reserves lets the government cover spending for a while without borrowing more or cutting programs right away. Gold cannot stand in for a steady flow of budget revenue, though. SZRU warns that if the deficit lasts and the reserves are not rebuilt, Russia will have to borrow more, raise taxes or cut budget programs.
The agency reads the decline as a sign of mounting financial pressure while the war drains state resources. Denmark’s intelligence service recently concluded that the Russian economy was on the brink of a “major crisis” because of the war.
