20 May 2026
Russia’s gold reserves declined for the fourth consecutive month in April 2026, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation reported on Wednesday.
As of May 1, Russia’s gold reserves totaled 73.9 million ounces of gold bars. This volume has decreased by 200,000 ounces over the month and by 900,000 ounces since the beginning of the year. As a result, the total amount of gold on the Central Bank’s balance sheet fell to its lowest since March 2022.
In terms of tonnes, the Central Bank’s gold reserves lost 27.9 tonnes from January to April. This represents a record decline since 2002, according to data from the World Gold Council: in May 2002, the Central Bank’s gold reserves fell by 41.5 tonnes.
Over the next two decades, the Central Bank primarily purchased gold, often by the hundreds of tons per year, and never reduced its gold reserves by more than 100,000 ounces (3.1 tons) in a month—primarily for coin minting. The only exception was July 2005, when 7.7 tons of gold left the Central Bank’s balance sheet. However, the 2026 sell-off exceeded this record by 3.5 times.
The Central Bank is selling gold as part of a “mirroring” of transactions with the assets of the National Welfare Fund (which form part of the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves). The regulator has two key reasons for such operations, notes Freedom Finance Global analyst Natalia Milchakova: “First and foremost, it is to cover the budget deficit, which reached 4.6 trillion rubles by the end of March. Without partial compensation from the Central Bank, given the modest oil and gas revenues at the beginning of the year, the figure could have exceeded 5 trillion rubles.”
“Furthermore, the gold sales could have been aimed at building up foreign currency reserves—a shortage arose due to weak export revenues at the beginning of the year. The precious metal was exchanged for yuan,” Milchakova points out.
Since 2022, Russian authorities have been actively selling off foreign currency and gold from the National Welfare Fund to replenish the budget, which has set military spending at its highest level since Soviet times. However, until recently, these gold transactions were virtual: the government sold the precious metal not on the market, but to the Central Bank, effectively shifting its gold reserves “from pocket to pocket.” As a result, the gold bars remained part of the country’s gold reserves, which exceed 2,000 tonnes and are the fifth largest in the world.
Since the beginning of 2026, the situation has changed: the Central Bank has begun conducting actual operations selling physical gold, as it already does with Chinese yuan from the National Welfare Fund.
This is apparently due to the Central Bank’s reluctance to burn through all its remaining yuan reserves, according to economists Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr. The yuan is the last currency available to the Central Bank for market operations and influencing the ruble exchange rate, and how much remains in its gold and foreign exchange reserves is unknown: the Central Bank classified statistics on its reserve structure after being hit by sanctions, and $300 billion of its assets in the West were frozen.