Putin’s Gold Is Melting — and the U.S. Is Running Out of Excuses
Russia’s war chest is burning, Ukraine is on the march, and the next battle will be fought with propaganda
Russia’s National Wealth Fund — the savings piggy bank Putin uses to plug his deficit budget and keep the war machine running — held just $21 billion in foreign currency assets as of June 1, 2025. The gold position now stands at 139.5 metric tons, down from 400 tons before Putin launched his failed three-day blitz to capture Kyiv.
According to Bloomberg, due to surging war costs and falling oil revenues, Russia burned through $6 billion from the NWF. If this pace holds — and it likely will, because neither war spending nor oil prices are easy to rein in — Putin has maybe three months of cash left.
But he’s not going to touch that cash. He’ll dip into the gold pot instead. Between February 2022 and May 2025, he already drained 261 metric tons.
40 months.
261 metric tons.
That’s 6.5 tons per month.
If he keeps that depletion rate, he’s got 20 months of gold left. But that’s not where we are. We’re not starting at zero — we’re starting at a $6 billion monthly burn. At this rate, the entire pot could be gone in six months.
Putin almost certainly knows this. There’s a reason the Kremlin still publishes the NWF data — it’s a signal. A message to the oligarchs and the world: yes, we’re bleeding, but we’re still here. Not dead yet.
In the next few months, he’ll have to choose:
Start falsifying the data — which he’s probably already doing, at the margins —
Or something else, something more drastic.
He’s probably already told his finance minister and defense minister: match national spending — including the war — to daily oil revenues. He’s most likely to go with that route. Which means he’ll be forced to pull back not just on war spending, but also on the federal budget. Russia will enter a period of spending contraction. And that has the potential to shove the entire economy into a deep recession.
I don’t see Putin spending the same dollar amount on war in December 2025 as he did in May 2025. He’s going to make some hard calls. He’ll have to pick and choose. And considering how fast Ukraine’s combat power is ramping up — thanks to some terrific moves by both Europe and Ukraine — the balance of power is starting to tilt.
That’s part of the reason I wrote yesterday, “We’ve got some bad news, but also a pile of good news—so good it’s starting to scare my pants off.” But then the piece dove into the F-16 vs. Su-35 fight, and I didn’t unpack what I meant by “scare my pants off.”
The scare comes from U.S. history.
Every time Ukraine got close to taking control of the battlefield — every time it looked like they might actually pull ahead — the American administration worked overtime to reset the balance. Case in point: late 2022. Ukraine smashed Russian positions in Kharkiv and Kherson in a massive counterattack. Russian forces were reeling. Ukraine begged — for months — for mechanized armor and HIMARS launchers to keep the pressure on. The Biden administration refused.
The result? Putin was gifted time — time to dig trench after trench across southern Ukraine, turning maneuver warfare into a logistical nightmare. Biden’s team gave him the buffer he needed to survive. Did they not see what he was doing in the south? Of course they did. And they chose to keep Ukraine in check.
There’s more. When Ukraine tried to launch drones to sink key ships of the Black Sea Fleet, reports say their Starlink connections were cut — protecting Russian naval assets. When Ukraine asked for permission to strike Russian jets sitting in open fields, that request was denied too. Biden never authorized strikes on Russian airfields.
Trump isn’t the only one running a Putin protection plan. Biden had one, too.
So, every time Ukraine starts moving forward, Washington steps in to pull them back. And right now, Ukraine is moving. Fast. Russia, on the other hand, is in sharp decline.
That’s why I wasn’t the least bit surprised when Tulsi Gabbard — now serving as Director of National Intelligence — warned the world about nuclear annihilation.
According to Gabbard, today’s nuclear weapons make Hiroshima look like a firecracker. “A single nuclear weapon today could kill millions in just minutes,” she said.
“This is the reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now. Because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.”
And then came the real MAGA kicker. Gabbard suggested that powerful elites aren’t too worried — because they assume they’ll have access to nuclear shelters. They'll ride out the firestorm while the rest of the world burns.
“It’s up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness. We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust.”
But hold on a minute. Why all the propaganda? Why not just intervene directly, like the previous U.S. administration did? Why make the case on behalf of Putin?
Simple — the United States has played almost all the cards it had left. Nearly 60% of Ukraine’s weapons are now coming from Europe. The rest? Mostly from Ukraine itself. U.S. deliveries have slowed to a trickle.
The Trump administration has only a few levers left to pull:
Block Ukraine from buying U.S. weapons — even if they’re ready to pay.
Slow-walk the deliveries already promised by the Biden administration and approved by Congress.
Try to stop Europe from transferring American-made weapons to Ukraine.
Potentially cut off intelligence sharing if Ukraine looks poised to fully defeat Putin’s army.
Options 1 and 2? Very likely.
Options 3 and 4? Political landmines. But not off the table.
Either way, Ukraine and Europe need to be ready. But here’s the key question: do any of these four moves change the battlefield in Russia’s favor?
Nope.
They’ll sting, sure — but not like they did in 2022, 2023, or even 2024. Ukraine has moved far beyond that vulnerable phase. And Russia? It’s slipped well below the threshold of real recovery. The shift in battlefield dynamics is nearly irreversible.
Europe needs to understand where it stands right now. Between March 2025 and today, Europe has done exceptional work. Ukraine is on the verge of breaking out. This is not the time to relax.
If Europe keeps pressing, it won’t be long before someone tells Trump and J.D. Vance: you’re out of cards.
Europe holds the outcome now.
And that’s exactly why propaganda is about to hit overdrive.
So watch out.
The Concis has one of the highest engagement rates on Substack—beating even some of the biggest names. But its reach is still limited. Why? Because we haven’t crossed the 10,000-subscriber mark yet.
Right now, we’re at 7214
Every new subscriber doesn’t just grow this platform—it helps push stories like this one further into the global conversation. Stories that cut through propaganda. Stories that track the truth, not the trend.
Your subscription fuels The Concis to fly the flag for Ukraine and global democracy with even more force.
This is an outstanding sub stack channel! Shankar Narayan is always so on point! The comments left by people here are intelligent and thoughtful. Whenever I share what Shankar has said,I always tell people to read the whole thing- to absorb what is being said. I tell them to keep an open mind and truly consider how one thing relates to another. It seems I’m having a little bit of a hard time with some of the people I’m trying to share this channel with. I intend to keep trying.
The USA is concerned about what happens to Russia when Putin falls and what happens to Russia’s nuclear weapons.
My concern is that the world cannot be nuclear blackmailed. Otherwise, any rogue state could say ‘I’ve got nuclear weapons, now give me the world’. The answer to that is obviously no.