Media: Russia is smuggling gold from Sudan to finance war

Russia is smuggling gold from Sudan to finance the war in Ukraine, Report informs, citing CNN.

"Days after Moscow launched its bloody war on Ukraine, a Russian cargo plane stood on a Khartoum runway, a strip of tarmac surrounded by red-orange sand. The aircraft's manifest stated it was loaded with cookies. Sudan rarely, if ever, exports cookies.

Inside the hold, colorful boxes of cookies stretched out before them. Hidden just beneath were wooden crates of Sudan's most precious resource. Gold. Roughly one ton of it. This incident in February is one of at least 16 known Russian gold smuggling flights out of Sudan," CNN said.

"In exchange, Russia has lent powerful political and military backing to Sudan's increasingly unpopular military leadership as it violently quashes the country's pro-democracy movement.

At the heart of this quid pro quo between Moscow and Sudan's military junta is Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and key ally of President Vladimir Putin."