As for Russia, its central bank has been an aggressive buyer of gold, not seller
gold is a major source of revenue for the Russian economy. Restricting exports to G7 economies will cause more financial strain to Russia as it wages the war in."
That, of course, is incorrect: the biggest buyers of gold in recent years have not been G7 countries (United States, France, Canada, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and Italy),
many of whom naively sold much if not all their gold in the recent past and have refused or simply don't have the funds to restock; instead purchases have all been by developing nation central banks (like
India and
Turkey, and of course China which however has a habit of only revealing its true gold inventory every decade or so) who have been quietly preparing to do what Russia is doing by dedollarizing and instead allocating capital into a counterparty-free asset.