Where is Putin getting the money to fund a war?

Surprisingly, Russia is allegedly plundering Sudan of gold in an effort to help fund the war against Ukraine..

Russia has faced sanctions from the West ever since the invasion of Ukraine a few months ago, so how is the war being funded?

According to a CNN report, Russia is plundering gold in Sudan to boost President Vladimir Putin’s war effort.

Days after the war was launched, a Russian cargo plane was spotted on the Khartoum runway. According to the aircraft’s manifest, it was loaded with cookies.

Cookies? The CNN report said that Sudan rarely, if ever, exports cookies.

“A heated debate transpired between officials in a back office of Khartoum International Airport,” the CNN report said. “They feared that inspecting the plane would vex the country’s increasingly pro-Russian military leadership. Multiple previous attempts to intercept suspicious Russian carriers had been stopped. Ultimately, however, the officials decided to board the plane. Inside the hold, colorful boxes of cookies stretched out before them. Hidden just beneath were wooden crates of Sudan’s most previous resource. Gold. Roughly a ton of it.”

The incident, which occurred, in February, is one of at least 16 known Russian gold smuggling flights out of Sudan, over the last year-and-a-half. Sudan is Africa’s third-largest producer of the precious metal.

“Multiple interviews with high-level Sudanese and US officials and troves of documents viewed by CNN paint a picture of an elaborate Russian scheme to plunder Sudan’s riches in a bid to fortify Russia against increasingly robust Western sanctions and to buttress Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.”

And since the plundering has been going on for more than a year, one can only assume that Putin had been planning to invade Ukraine for at least that long and was building up some reserves. Or maybe he just saw an opportunity to line his country’s pockets and capitalized on it, while engaging in quid pro quo with Sudan’s military junta.

Either way, none of this is surprising. If we know anything about Putin, it’s that he’s crafty and isn’t afraid to flex his military muscle, if need be, to get what he wants.