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Did Russia peg the Rubles to gold? I keep reading articles on that. Are there any catches or circumstantial facts, that Russia is not on a gold based standard? Trying to verify these articles.
"With a price of RUB5,000 (£45.12) for a gram of gold,"
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/why-russia-put-rouble-gold-124545794.html
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4500472-note-on-new-russian-gold-standard
https://asiatimes.com/2022/04/russian-rubles-gold-standard-unlikely-to-last/
No Russia is not officially on gold standard.
To be on gold standard country has to use gold as fixed unit of account by setting fixed exchange rate between currency and gold, and be willing to exchange the currency for at the promised rate (see Eichengreen & Esteves (2021), International Finance in The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World: Volume 2: 1870 to the Present, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2, pp. 501–525). That exchange rate can be devalued or revalued in the future, but you can't have gold standard when there is no fixed exchange rate between gold and currency in some given time period and the price of gold (in the currency you want to turn into gold standard) is allowed to float.
However, what Russia has done is sort of an inverse gold standard. They did fixed the price of gold in terms of rubles, but you are not allowed to exchange your rubles for gold. There is quite good Al Jazeera article that explains the difference in detail here.
Hence technically they are not on gold standard but rather they instituted 'gold peg'.
Likely Russian propaganda calling it 'gold standard', and the fact that it indeed sounds like a gold standard (it almost even is, if Russia's central bank would be willing to give you gold for rubles it would count) confused many people and even media.
Agreed with 1muflon1. "Gold standard" means you can buy gold with Ruble with a relatively stable rate, not the other way around.
Adding to this, Russians are actually forcing something closer to "Gas Standard", where you can buy gas with Rubles. Today (April 27) four countries in Europe including Germany and Austria have agreed to buy gas with Rubles.
No.
Sanctions have caused a bank run in Russia. Buying unlimited amount of gold at a fixed price was one of the ways for russian central bank to provide much needed liquidity to commercial banks.
Since then liquidity crisis in russian banking system has been solved and this rule has been suspended.
