As Russia struggles with the immense cost of its war in Ukraine, which is entering its fifth year, it has turned to selling gold bullion.
“Russia has steadily depleted its sovereign wealth fund’s liquid reserves funding its war in Ukraine and has had to resort to selling its gold reserves due to unsustainable spending,” the Institute for the Study of War think tank said in a December 2025 assessment.
Much of the gold has been taken from African countries such as Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic and Mali, where Russian mercenaries have propped up authoritarian regimes in exchange for mineral extraction rights.
“Gold has never been more critical to Russia,” John Kennedy, an expert at the Rand Europe research organization, told British newspaper The Telegraph for a November 30, 2025, article. “For a long time, it’s been hoarding gold, and since the invasion, it’s been putting it to use.
“Gold is crucial to managing growing economic pressures, which include an increasing budget deficit and new sanctions on its major oil exporting companies. Russia is also really interested in using gold to access international markets.”
Through its mercenaries and operatives, Russia has seized control of gold mines in the CAR along with major mining sites in Mali and Burkina Faso, the third- and fourth-largest gold producers on the continent.
To pay the Wagner Group, the CAR government in 2020 handed over control of the country’s largest gold mine in Ndassima, where mercenaries have blocked official inspections and threatened state agents attempting to enter. In 2023, Wagner mercenaries reportedly committed atrocities against local communities when they seized artisanal gold mines in the Yidéré and Baboua areas of western CAR’s Nana-Mambéré prefecture.
“[Wagner] does not merely secure sites — it seizes them,” the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime research institute wrote in an October 2025 analysis. “Its approach has been consistent: by eliminating competitors, intimidating officials and obtaining permits under opaque conditions, it has laundered gold and diamonds through shell companies.”
Russia extracted $2.5 billion of African gold in less than two years after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to a group of international researchers who published the Blood Gold Report in December 2023.
“We coined this phrase blood gold to help people understand the connection between the business side of Wagner and the truly deadly foreign policies and international crimes being undertaken by the Russian state,” Jessica Berlin, one of the report’s authors, told the United States’ National Public Radio in December 2023.
Lou Osborne, an analyst with investigative journalism collective All Eyes on Wagner, said Russia uses African gold from the CAR to fund its mercenary operations there and to help keep its war machine rolling in Ukraine.
“We believe that part of the gold is to finance Wagner operations in CAR, and part of it we believe that they sell it on the international market,” she said in a May 2025 interview with France 24. “That’s a way for them to access money. With all the international sanctions in place, it’s a bit difficult today to access the financial system. Being able to sell gold, they access cash basically.”
Rand Europe reported in 2024 that Russia is “using physical gold in state-to-state payments, and Russian businesses are involved in gold-for-goods, gold-for-weapons and gold-for-cash exchanges.”
To help build a new military drone industry in Russia, the Kremlin gave at least $104 million in gold bars to a Tehran-based company linked to the Iranian government, according to a May 2025 report by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Russia also is said to have paid for North Korean weapons with gold, according to The Telegraph.
Osborne said Russia has responded to international sanctions by deepening its already vast network of shell companies.
“It has complexified over the years,” she said. “What we see with the Wagner Group is an approach which is really looking like organized crime. Everything is concealed. They don’t declare [gold production], and they put front companies in place in order to capture those minerals. They act as a mafia and try to circumvent sanctions.”