Vladimir Putin poses with gold bar, Russia has bought 570 metric tons of gold in the last decade

Vladimir Putin says the U.S. is endangering the global economy by abusing its dollar monopoly and the Russians are acting accordingly.

Now Putin has pushed Russia to become the world’s largest oil producer, he’s also made it the biggest gold buyer. His central bank has added 570 metric tons of the metal in the past decade, a quarter more than runner-up China, according to IMF data compiled by Bloomberg.

The added gold is also almost triple the weight of the Statue of Liberty.

photo Skander Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency via wikimedia commons

“The more gold a country has, the more sovereignty it will have if there’s a cataclysm with the dollar, the euro, the pound or any other reserve currency,” said Evgeny Fedorov, a member of for Putin’s United Russia party, in a telephone interview with Bloomberg.

Central banks around the world have printed money to escape the global financial crisis which caused the gold prices to soar as investors seek a safety net.

In 1998, the year Russia defaulted on $40 billion of domestic debt, it took as many as 28 barrels of crude to buy an ounce of gold, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That ratio tumbled to 11.5 by the time Putin first came to power a year later and in 2005, after it touched 6.5 — less than half.

“Putin’s gold strategy fits in with his resource nationalism, statist agenda,” said Tim Ash, head of emerging- market research at Standard Bank Plc in London. “It’s kind of a defensive play, but it worked, right?” Ash said in an interview in Moscow. “You need luck in politics and business, and clearly the guy has it.”