Having sparked hyperinflation in European gas prices and record energy costs around the globe with their poorly conceived and implemented Russian energy sanctions which have backfired spectacularly, allowing Moscow to reap record energy export profits and China and India to buy oil far below spot prices while leaving US motorists paying record prices at the pump, on Sunday the Biden admin alongside the G-7 announced that they will ban Russian gold imports to "further impose financial costs on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine."

The import ban will apply to gold leaving Russia for G-7 countries for the first time, and will be codified by the US Treasury Department on Tuesday.

"The United States has imposed unprecedented costs on Putin to deny him the revenue he needs to fund his war against Ukraine," Biden tweeted on Sunday, the first day of a G7 meeting in Germany; a formal announcement is expected later on during the summit.

"Together, the G7 will announce that we will ban the import of Russian gold, a major export that rakes in tens of billions of dollars for Russia" he added.

While Western sanctions to punish Russia have largely closed European and US markets to gold from the world's second-biggest bullion miner, the G-7 pledge would mark a total severance between Russia and the world's top two trading centers, London and New York, largely a purely symbolic escalation.