Buying one way tickets to hell for Russian soldiers by selling off Russia’s gold and treasure… What will be left when all the humans and gold have been carelessly traded away by Putin to power the mindless Russian war machine?

  • Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca
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    19 hours ago

    “The National Wealth Fund held 405.7 metric tons of gold before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the Finance Ministry has liquidated around 57% of that stash—about 232.6 tons—to shore up the budget.

    As of November 1, 2025, the fund’s gold holdings have fallen to 173.1 tons. Combined liquid assets, including yuan holdings, have dropped from $113.5 billion before the war to just $51.6 billion today. As a share of Russia’s GDP, unspent reserves have shrunk fourfold.”

    Hell ya.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      1 hour ago

      Can’t call off the war, that would make him look weak. Better liquidate the gold stores and tank the economy so he can maintain the image of a big strong boy.

      What a weak pathetic man for some reason surrounded by sycophants.

      • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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        10 hours ago

        It is until you realize how expensive this war is. The damage a drone does to an oil refinery probably costs a few millions to repair and even more in lost profits, if it actually stops production. Tanks cost a million a piece easily. Air defense, planes and so forth easily cost more. Even something like a Shahed is $200k per shot.

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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        15 hours ago

        Corruption is actually a feature in this case. Most of that cash is actually pumped directly into local economies. /s

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Let’s hope the old soviet nukes doesn’t work any more, they are insanely expensive to maintain, are supposed to never actually being used or even tested any more (by international treaties, and when donald said he’d do testing, the ruskies were not on the forefront wanting to “test too”) and russia is one of the most corrupt countries on earth.

      It’s like having inherited 6000 wheels of old cheese in 1991. “Maybe one of them works?”

      Abd if they launch one, be it dirty, their whole country will be melted to glass so …

      Additionally, three persons must “turn the key” to launch a russian nuke so maybe everyone isn’t insane over there.

      • Bazell@lemmy.zip
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        10 hours ago

        Well, russia has done some nuclear tests recently. But I suppose that these were freshly manufactured bombs just to show off the “existing threat” from russia itself. So, I suppose that it has a few working nuclear bombs that can be used. But, agree, most of others probably are just so called dirty bombs by now.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Are you sure about that? I can inly find they tested very small yield bombs up to 2019, no termo nukes or so.

          • Bazell@lemmy.zip
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            2 hours ago

            Maybe, not 100%. I read in news that they started nuclear trainings. And I supposed that that also meant that they nuked some deserted area in their country for training purposes. I suppose that I may be incorrect then and they simply doing even more showing off.

      • slampisko@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Someone exactly the same will take his place. The problem is in the system, not in the individual

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          This might not be exactly as bad as you think, the sycophants surrounding putin are in it for wealth, not to restore the soviet union (they do ofc play along, or get thrown off a balcony). So when he dies, after the power struggle, there is a big chance that we, the west, can leverage help vs “democracy” etc. Stopping the war ofc. And so on. The rich in Moscow gets to enjoy their super yachts and villas in Italy and their wifes shopping in Paris, in counterpart for dismantling their war machine.

          At least It’s a possible scenario.

  • MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Selling off gold reserves is a sure sign that the Special Military Operation is going well.

    It feels inevitable that Putin is going to fall out a window.

  • SpacePanda@mander.xyz
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    19 hours ago

    Like a true Soviet hes going to bankrupt his country, again. Interesting how this keeps happening.

  • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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    21 hours ago

    So, the western financial sector is now going to fund the Russian war machine directly by buy this?

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      I’m all for it but how do you stop gold being sold? I mean you could probably sell it in asia or africa if the EU forbid it?

      Oil takes whole boats to transport, and we can’t even do that correctly ☹️

      • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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        9 hours ago

        I was referring specifically to western financial institutions buying. Really a comment on how hard it is to stop the west from financing Putin. A difficult problem.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Some governments will buy up large amounts but I bet a huge portion of it is privately acquired.

  • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Gold is as worthless as paper

    When will we stop this practice of saying something worthless is valuable just so that greedy fuckers can hoard that crap?

    • Bronzie@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      My man; everything is worthless unless a critical mass of people find value in it.

      If every single person in the entire world except you refused to acknowledge the US dollar tomorrow, it would become worthless.
      The same goes for every currency having ever existed.

      • No_Eponym@lemmy.ca
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        5 hours ago

        everything is worthless

        A corollary is that the best things in life are free either not actually “the best” or not yet effectively monitized.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Gold is as worthless as paper

      FALSE!
      If a lot of people want to pay for it, it’s obviously not worthless.
      Gold also has value as a metal of many uses, and in many situations gold is not easy to replace.
      So even without being pretty and non corrosive and rare, it would still have value.
      Also your post is extremely besides the point of Russia liquidating assets.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          You can grow trees and make as much paper as you want.
          You can’t do the same with gold.
          Paper is cheap because it is dirt cheap to make and the resources for it are both plentiful and easy to get at.

          Gold is expensive, because it’s in limited supply, and you can’t make gold, and gold is very hard to extract. It also has many functions due to its special properties and it is often hard to replace with other materials.

          • frank@sopuli.xyz
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            12 hours ago

            And it is soooooo stable! Virtually no oxidization, easy to clean and remelt/recast. It holds its physical properties insanely well

          • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            Yes and no: Gold has many important properties and is relatively rare, but what really makes it expensive is that enough people agree that it’s worth something.

            If the only market for gold was for actual applications where gold is needed, the price would absolutely tank.

            • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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              21 hours ago

              No it would not tank to be as worthless as paper, which was what I argued against.
              You are arguing against a strawman.
              If gold was only used industrially like steel or other metals, and the value was according to that, it would still be way more expensive than steel and aluminum.
              Yes the shortage inflates the price, I never argued it didn’t. But it is absolutely not worthless as the post I responded to claimed.

              • Cypher@lemmy.world
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                20 hours ago

                If the gold price dropped significantly it would be used more often, in turn driving the price back up due to demand and limited supply.

                You’re correct and anyone saying gold is worthless, or worth very little, is a fool.

                • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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                  10 hours ago

                  You are spot on that if gold was cheaper it would be used more. It is such an amazing material.

          • OfCourseNot@fedia.io
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            21 hours ago

            First, I cannot grow trees in my small rented flat. And felling trees and turning them into paper is quite a hard work, it’s only cheap at an industrial scale and it kinda fucks up the environment a bit. Paper used to be an expensive commodity (people would wrote letters like this).

            The properties that make gold expensive are its limited supply, as you pointed, and the fact that it doesn’t degrades with time, which make it a great material to use to ‘store value’. It has some other interesting physical properties that make it useful, but those aren’t the main reasons of its price.

    • tuff_wizard@aussie.zone
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      21 hours ago

      Things have little intrinsic value. They are only worth what people will pay for them. If the price of gold upsets you, please do not investigate the stock exchange.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Except gold has huge intrinsic value because it’s not that common and exceedingly useful.

        Diamonds, diamonds are the scam that seems to be implied here.

        • tuff_wizard@aussie.zone
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          15 hours ago

          Absolutely but most of its value is due to it being rare…. And shiny. The industrial uses were just a bonus we worked out later. In the early days it was valuable simply because we all told ourselves it was worth a certain amount of chickens.

    • bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      21 hours ago

      There are lots of people willing to buy gold, and have been for millennia. Most paper currency is worthless 200 years later.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Actually it’s one of the more stable things out there. It resists economic issues.