Baijiahao: Russia makes brilliant move by exchanging US securities for gold

In 2023, central banks around the world purchased significant amounts of gold. China's activity in this area was particularly noticeable as the nation's gold reserves increased by 225 tons over the year.

Photo: "NBP Gold" by covilha is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

An article published on Chinese Internet platform Baijiahao says that Russia actively participated in the gold rush to increase its precious metals reserves.

As a result, Russia's gold reserves reached a record 2.36 thousand tons. Russia is thus ranked fifth following the USA, Germany, Italy and France.

The current "gold rush” is largely due to Russia's actions. The Russian Federation did not have so much interest in gold before and preferred to invest in American securities instead, the article in the Chinese publication said.

However, a few years ago the Central Bank of Russia conducted a large-scale sale of American bonds and used the proceeds to purchase large amounts of gold bars, the authors of the material assert. The decision raised eyebrows in the world, but only few could understand the meaning of it. Nowadays, however, many other central banks are trying to follow Russia's example and do the same.

This is due to the deterioration of relations between Russia and the United States. The assets-into-gold strategy has proven to be extremely successful. Despite all restrictions and sanctions, the American government has no access to Russian gold.

Currently, when Washington is actively applying sanctions everywhere around, many countries do prefer to follow Russia's example. In particular, China also purchases precious metals and rids of American government bonds.

It is worthy of note that such materials can be found not only on Chinese Internet platforms, but also in Western media. Many analysts are interested in Russia's experience to replace American government bonds with solid assets. It is worth recalling that ten years ago Russia owned US securities worth more than one hundred billion dollars.

Russia started taking measures to get rid of them as soon as Washington launched the policy of sanctions against Moscow. Today, these investments are evaluated at tens of millions of dollars.

One is only left to wonder what would have happened if Russia had not decided to sell American securities in time. As a matter of fact, there is no need to try to imagine anything — suffice it to recall frozen Russian assets in Western banks.