In gata's conference held in 2005 by gold delegates in Canada (
http://www.gata.org to see summary video) a Russian economic advisor to Putin when he was president attended the gata conference to hear about gold price manipulation and supression. Gata can only speculate but very shortly after the conference the stability of the price of gold was lost and the price began fluctuating. Soon afterwards Putin went public to announce the Russian central bank was purchasing and hoarding large quantities of pm's.
It seems Russia has been at this for a few years now