To the joy of constantly complaining that a significant part of the domestic state reserves is invested in overseas treasury obligations, the Russian Federation, in an emergency, is coming out of the most reliable assets on Earth. Moscow for the third consecutive month reduces the volume of investments in US government bonds, the US Ministry of Finance. The released funds are transferred to European securities, as well as placed on deposits in private banks. According to the US financial data, from December to February this year, the Bank of Russia, acting as the manager of foreign exchange reserves, sold US treasury bonds (treasuries) for $ 11.9 billion. Thus, the total amount of RF investments in treasuries decreased by 11.2%. In March, the total volume of Russian investments in US Treasury bonds fell to the lowest level for the year - $ 93.8 billion, while their share in total reserves decreased from 24.3% to 20.5%. Similar rates of sale of the American debt in the market were not observed since 2016. It is noteworthy that, despite the rejection of treasuries, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is not going to give up securities as such. The total volume of foreign securities in the Central Bank's reserves did not decrease, but increased from $ 262.4 billion to $ 264.2 billion, accounting for 58% of total reserves ($ 453.4 billion). "The fact that Russia for the third month in a row reduces investments in US Treasury bonds is, of course, an alarming sign related to the sharp increase in geopolitical tensions between our countries," said Vice-President of the Golden Mint House Alexei Vyazovsky. - But this process has also an economic reason. For quite a long time, the yield of the "treasurers" of the United States has been growing. This means that prices are falling. Apparently, the governors of the reserves from the Central Bank considered that buying bonds in a falling market is not the best idea and reduced investments in favor of gold, whose reserves in the regulator's stores are setting ever new records ". However, it is unlikely that an increase in the yield of treasuries is the main reason for the withdrawal of Russian reserves from them. In a similar situation, there were other countries, but such a massive seil on treasuries recently did not suit anyone. It is likely that Moscow fears that due to the worsening of relations between Russia and the West and primarily the United States, the Russian reserves placed in treasuries may be blocked on American custody accounts. Something like this took place during the Iran-US confrontation and anti-Iran sanctions. This is not the only case of blocking the US foreign reserves. So, some time ago, the US financial authorities decided to freeze the funds of the national sovereign fund of Kazakhstan. We are talking about assets worth $ 22 billion, or 40% of the volume of the Future Generations Fund of this country.

In total, the frozen amount accounted for 17% of Kazakhstan's GDP. The fund is used by the government for emergency financing of banks and support of the national currency. Its replenishment is carried out at the expense of oil export revenues. The money was frozen at the suit of the company of Moldovan businessman Anatoly Stati, filed against the government of Kazakhstan.

the businessman and his son invested in the Kazakh fuel and energy complex, after which they accused the government of attempting to raid the seizure of their property. Russia, of course, is not Kazakhstan, but this example is clearly not left without attention of the Central Bank of Russia. There are still risks of transferring sanctions on Russian debts, which suggests that the Central Bank decided to reduce risks and partially get rid of US assets. And perhaps, not even partially.