(Kitco News) – Western sanctions have upended traditional gold flows, with Russian bullion that would normally go to London now pouring into Hong Kong at a record pace on its way to mainland China and other Asian markets.
According to an analysis of Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department data by BullionVault, Hong Kong imported 112.7 tonnes of Russian-origin gold in just the first seven months of 2026. This far surpassed the record 92.1 tonnes of Russian gold imported during all of 2025. In 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hong Kong imported only 3.3 tonnes. Russian bullion accounted for almost 15% of Hong Kong’s non-monetary gold imports in the first seven months of this year, up from just 0.6% in 2021.
Analysts told CNBC that the dramatic increase highlights the ways that Russia’s gold trade has been rerouted since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, when its gold producers were shut out of major Western markets.
“Hong Kong has emerged as an important hub for Russia-China trade since the full-scale invasion,” Vita Spivak, senior consultant at Gatehouse Advisory Partners told the network. “Most gold goes to mainland China, as it hasn’t placed sanctions on Russian gold.”
“For bullion specifically, Hong Kong also offers advantages beyond sanctions circumvention,” she added. “It provides direct access to the world’s largest gold-consuming market.”
The London Bullion Market Association suspended all six Russian gold and silver refiners from its Good Delivery lists in March 2022, with the U.S., UK and other Western countries subsequently imposing restrictions on Russian gold, effectively closing off the markets that had been the primary destinations for the country’s bullion exports.
“The fact that Hong Kong’s official data clearly shows a steep rise in imports of Russian gold reflects the kind of support and bilateral trade for which Putin has repeatedly thanked Xi,” said Adrian Ash, director of research at BullionVault.
“Russian exports of gold to the UK and other Western-sanctioned nations of course collapsed,” he added.
Between 2019 and 2021, Russia’s gold exports to the UK amounted to around two-thirds of the country’s mine production, the BullionVault data showed.
“Hong Kong has always been an important entrepot for gold going into China,” said Rhona O’Connell, head of market analysis for EMEA and Asia at StoneX, adding that Hong Kong is now in “a race with Singapore for hub supremacy and is about six months ahead in terms of infrastructure.”
China has designated gold a “strategic mineral” and has promoted physical bullion as a store of value for households, while the country’s central bank has continued adding to its reserves at a torrid pace.
“We do know that whether it’s the PBOC or if it’s the Chinese consumers, they’ve all been buying quite a bit of gold,” Charles Chang, Greater China country lead for corporates at S&P Global Ratings, told CNBC. “In times of high uncertainty, consumers tend to want to protect their savings, and they find gold as one vehicle for that.”
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