The Russians would be happy to buy the whole lot in one go. In...

The Russians would be happy to buy the whole lot in one go. In any case I thought this is going to be dribbled out on the market over several years.
It makes no sense to depress the gold price unless you are attempting to manipulate the market, which presumably they aren't.
The fundamentals are gold is in short supply. It's very expensive to mine.
If the price drops mines close. If it goes up not many more mines will come on stream as the reserves are simply not there. Gold is unquestionably in a long term bull market. The only question is what will be the "normal" price in a few years? I would think a thousand dollars an ounce would be a minimum normal price - probably more like two thousand within five years.