The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Peter Zeihan || Interfering with the Russian Gold Trade

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

The Russians are taking a page from the Iranians by using gold to avoid the sanctions imposed on the Euro and USD. But before we look at how the Europeans are trying to disrupt their gold usage, we must see why gold makes sense for Russia.Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/interfering-with-the-russian-gold-trade

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you once again from Colorado. You may have noticed in the news of late that the Europeans are starting to find, how should I call this, non-standard ways of targeting non-standard ways that the Russians are using to get around sanctions in various forms. And the issue of the day happens to be gold. So one of the many, many ways that you can avoid sanctions that deal with either the euro or the dollar is to physically trade in gold. like you physically fly it to a location to pay for goods or services. And the Russians are taking a page from the Iranians who have been doing this for years. The big deference here is scale.

Russia is a much larger country with a much larger economy, and unlike Iran, it is actually a producer of gold. And for the Russians, this is a pretty good trick. So gold, because it is so dense in terms of its value, was relatively easy to hide or smuggle. So according to official statistics, Russia is the world's third. largest producer. But the production statistics are a state secret. They only share what they want to. There's no auditing. And so it's undoubtedly higher. They're almost certainly the number one.

In addition, Russia has a state reserve of gold bullion that is a complete state secret that we don't know how big it is. So they're probably the world's largest holder of gold. In addition, there is a state reserve of partially processed gold that is not in full bullion form, but could be with not too much difficulty. So if the Russians ever felt that they needed a few extra tens or maybe even hundreds of billions of dollars of gold, it probably wouldn't be a big stretch for them. In addition, and this is where the Europeans come in, Russia likes to accept services for Wagner. That's their paramilitary combat group that they used to basically crush opponents in foreign countries. Basically, you get a dictatorial government somewhere most likely in Africa.

that contracts for Wagner to come in and like destroy the opposition. It's very similar to what a lot of African countries do with the Angolans and their ninja group. But they like to get paid not just in gold, but in gold concessions. And all of these gold concessions that the Russians or Russian groups operate around the world are also state secrets. And so we don't have that data either. So at the end of the day, the Russians literally just take a plane and fly the gold somewhere to pay for, say, imports of products that are on the sanctions list. And if this sounds a little weird and a little fantastical, keep in mind that Russia's a really big place, and a lot of high-end stuff is already transported by air.

And in the case of the gold mines, they're almost exclusively in northeastern Siberia, the least populated part of the country, and the mines themselves typically are not on a road or a rail network. So their bullion has to get flown to Moscow anyway. So it's pretty easy for the Russians just to divert one or two of their own planes, loaded up with a few million to billion dollars worth of bullion and fly it to say China or Iran or wherever else in order to pay for services. No easy way around this unless you decide to go after those international concessions themselves. Two problems with that. First of all, you're targeting Wagner, so there might be a fight on your hand. And second, Wagner doesn't go into

countries where it's not invited. So you're talking about having to flip the views of a hostile, probably dictatorial and maybe even borderline genocidal government in order to get at Wagner. These are not things that are easily done, but if you're going to go after the gold trail, that's really the only way to do it. Okay, that's it for me. See you guys next time.