Russia has the metals. Getting them is another matter.

Putin can offer access to rare-earth deposits. Russia already supplies much of the world’s palladium and antimony. Between those two facts sits the harder story: which minerals become useful power, and what it takes to keep them moving.

Research cut-off: 29 September 2026. Annual production figures are dated estimates, not live shipment data.

When Vladimir Putin offered American companies a place in Russia’s mineral business in February 2025, there was plenty of geology to put behind the invitation.

“We would be happy to cooperate with any foreign partners, including American companies.”

Vladimir Putin, Russian president, in remarks republished in English by Russia’s Foreign Ministry on 25 February 2025. ^[17]

The offer came in an answer about the proposed American deal for Ukraine’s minerals. Putin described Russia as a leading holder of rare and rare-earth resources and invited foreign participation. It was a pitch to prospective partners, carrying the suggestion that a better political relationship could come with a substantial commercial prize.

A manufacturer reading it would still need to know what was available for delivery.

Russia supplied an estimated 44% of the world’s mined palladium in 2025. Its share of rare-earth mine production was about 0.7%. The same country, two very different positions at the negotiating table. ^[1]

A company buying palladium has to think about an established Russian supplier that would be difficult to replace quickly. A company offered a stake in an undeveloped rare-earth deposit has to think about financing a mine, finding a workable processing route and waiting for its product. Both can be valuable. They belong on different timetables.

That distinction gets lost when every useful mineral becomes a rare earth and every large deposit becomes a strategic victory. Russia’s mineral wealth is real. So are the holes in the industrial system that would turn more of it into something a customer can use.

Start with what already comes out of the ground

EarthRarest’s global comparison of rare-earth mining, refining and magnet supply covers one part of the minerals business. Broaden the view and Russia’s strongest positions become easier to see.

Each bar measures Russia’s share of a separate commodity’s estimated 2025 mine output. These are different markets, not slices of one mineral pie. The figures also measure production, rather than exports or the quantity available to a particular country. Antimony’s world total excludes withheld US output.

Even with those limits, the order is revealing. Russia already supplies a large part of the palladium and antimony coming from mines. Potash puts it inside another essential business: growing food. Nickel is substantial, although Indonesia now produces on a much larger scale. Rare earths sit at the small end of Russia’s current output. ^[1]

For Washington or a European manufacturer, the immediate concern is therefore selective. Losing access to one difficult-to-replace Russian product could matter more than gaining a share in several undeveloped deposits. For Moscow, established exports and future mineral projects offer different kinds of influence: one earns money now; the other can attract investment and political attention.

01 / Actual rare earths

A country can have the reserve and still need imports

Rare earths are a recognised group of 17 elements. Russia has them. USGS lists its reserves at 3.8 million tonnes of rare-earth-oxide equivalent, alongside estimated 2025 mine production of 2,600 tonnes. China produced 270,000 tonnes on the same basis, roughly 104 times as much. ^[2]

That comparison is about output. It is not a claim that Chinese rock is 104 times better, or that Russia could multiply production simply by deciding to do so. A reserve estimate sets out an economically recoverable mineral inventory under the assumptions used. It does not supply the equipment, chemicals or customers needed to extract and sell it.

The reserve total also bundles elements with very different jobs. A magnet manufacturer cannot order a general tonne of rare earths and treat whatever arrives as neodymium. The individual elements, their purity and the consistency of supply matter. This is where Russia’s story becomes less comfortable than its national reserve figure suggests.

Rosatom’s own words explain the gap

Russia has a working starting point. Lovozero, on the Kola Peninsula, produces loparite concentrate. The Solikamsk Magnesium Plant processes that feed and recovers a mixed rare-earth stream. Rosatom is trying to connect this established activity to more individual products and, further along the chain, permanent magnets.

Its director general described the purpose plainly at Raremet 2026:

“reducing Russia’s dependence on rare-earth imports and ensuring domestic industry is supplied with national resources”

Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom director general, address to Raremet, 20 May 2026; published by Rosatom’s press office on 21 May. ^[3]

That is an unusually useful qualification to a mineral-superpower claim. Rosatom’s ambition includes reducing Russia’s own dependence on imported material. Having the ore has not yet done that job.

The company’s June 2026 account described site preparation and technical approvals for Solikamsk’s separation project. A technology partner had built a full-scale test example of an extraction stage for separating neodymium and praseodymium. There is engineering behind the plan, but a test stage is still some distance from a complete commercial plant delivering its planned annual output. ^[3]

Glazov is meant to take the chain further. The special investment contract announced in February 2024 envisaged an initial 1,000 tonnes a year of permanent rare-earth magnets. A magnet is a finished component with particular performance requirements. It takes more than a supply of mixed oxides to make one reliably. The announced plant capacity should therefore be read as the size of a proposed industrial business, not another quantity to add to Russia’s mine output. ^[3]

For a foreign partner, these missing steps are also the opportunity. Investment might earn a return by solving a processing problem or securing a particular product. That is a more demanding proposition than buying access to a colourful patch on a mineral map. Our briefing on Russia’s operating rare-earth chain and planned separation and magnet plants sets out each project’s status and the work still to come.

Tomtor’s high grade comes with a long journey

Tomtor, in Yakutia, is the sort of deposit that makes the grand claims understandable. SRK’s estimate at the end of 2019 put its open-pit ore reserves at 11.4 million tonnes, grading 14.5% total rare-earth oxides and 6% niobium oxide. Those are historical project figures, with their own reporting basis, rather than a new national reserve total. ^[4]

Then comes the route to the factory. The technical account envisaged moving ore several thousand kilometres to a proposed processor near Krasnokamensk, using ice roads, barges, ships and rail. SRK judged the unusually high grade capable of supporting this complicated arrangement under the study’s assumptions.

Each transfer is part of the mine’s economics. A good result in the laboratory does not arrange a seasonal shipment, and a successful shipment does not commission the chemical plant waiting at the other end. Tomtor has to make these stages work together before its geology can become dependable annual supply.

A prospective buyer needs a product specification and delivery date. The reserve estimate is the beginning of that conversation. ^[4]

02 / Strategic metals, by our definition

EarthRarest uses strategic metals for eight specialist materials: antimony, bismuth, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, rhenium and tellurium. This is our editorial category. Government critical-mineral lists draw their boundaries differently, and several metals outside our eight are central to Russia’s position.

Antimony is already a large Russian business

Antimony deserves more attention in this story than it usually gets. USGS estimates Russia mined 32,000 tonnes of contained antimony in 2025, compared with China’s 40,000 tonnes. Russia’s listed reserves were 350,000 tonnes. Its share of the disclosed world mine total was roughly 29%. ^[5]

These are operating volumes. A buyer looking for another source of antimony is assessing a country that already produces a substantial part of the material, rather than one trying to turn a prospect into its first shipment.

The uses are less familiar than the politics. Antimony goes into flame retardants and lead alloys, including ammunition. Our guide to antimony’s industrial uses explains why relatively small quantities can matter to much larger manufacturing businesses.

There is a limit to what the mine ranking tells us. Contained antimony is not the same thing as refined antimony ready for a factory. The ore may travel, and the refinery may belong to a different business in a different country. A Russian share of mining therefore cannot be read as a promise that Russia alone controls the finished product, or that any interested buyer can obtain it. ^[5]

The useful commercial question is where a new contract would enter the chain. Would it secure concentrate, refined metal or a specified compound? Who would process it? Without those answers, an agreement for access to antimony could leave the buyer dependent on exactly the refining route it hoped to diversify.

Second place can mean six tonnes

Russia appears in several of the smaller-metal production tables, but the rankings need their numbers attached.

In estimated 2025 primary low-purity gallium production, Russia ranked second behind China. Russia’s quantity was 6 tonnes. China’s was 900. Calling Russia the second-largest producer is accurate, yet on its own it conceals how much primary gallium supply depends on China. Additional purification is also needed for particular electronic applications. ^[6]

Indium refinery output was estimated at 5 tonnes. Tellurium was larger at 67 tonnes, placing Russia behind China and ahead of Japan in that year’s disclosed estimates. The global tellurium data are incomplete, so these country quantities make a better comparison than a confident claim about Russia’s exact share of all world supply.

Tellurium also explains why a large base-metal business can be useful in a much smaller market. Much of it is recovered from residues generated during copper refining. The additional product depends on what enters the refinery and whether the operator has installed a recovery route. It does not require a standalone tellurium mine. ^[6]

This changes the investment question. A small recovery plant attached to an existing industrial site may offer something more immediate than an enormous new deposit far from a road. Whether it pays still depends on the feed, the recovery cost and what a buyer will accept.

Four metals where the evidence is thinner

For germanium, USGS identifies Russia among countries with commercial processing or recycling, while warning that world production is hard to verify and reserve data are generally unavailable. A precise Russian market share would suggest more certainty than the evidence provides.

Bismuth illustrates a different trap. The USGS Russia review estimates 400 tonnes of contained bismuth in mined ore in 2024. That is a mining measure from a different year, not a disclosed quantity of refined metal available for sale.

Hafnium has neither a world primary-production table nor quantified reserves in the 2026 USGS summary. Russia’s zirconium industry may give readers a reason to investigate hafnium, but it is not permission to invent a national hafnium stockpile.

Rhenium’s entry is clearer about the geology than the flow of material. USGS lists 310 tonnes of Russian reserves and marks mine production as unavailable. Missing data do not mean zero production. They mean the chart should leave a gap. ^[7]

For all four, the honest account is less tidy than a country ranking. Russia has relevant mineral and metallurgical activity; the public record does not support turning every activity into a measured source of strategic supply.

03 / Supplementary critical materials

Nickel brings a different scale of competition

“Supplementary” describes where these materials sit in the article. It certainly does not describe their importance to the businesses producing them.

Russia’s estimated nickel mine output was 200,000 tonnes in 2025, with reserves of 8.3 million tonnes. Indonesia produced 2.6 million tonnes that year, thirteen times Russia’s output. Russia has a long-established nickel industry, but it no longer determines the scale of the world market. ^[8]

Nornickel gives that industry a physical form. In 2025, the company reported about 199,000 tonnes of saleable nickel, 425,000 tonnes of copper, 2.725 million ounces of palladium and 667,000 ounces of platinum. Its copper figure includes copper in concentrate from the Trans-Baikal division; these numbers are not all equivalent shipments of refined metal. ^[9]

They describe a business earning money from several materials. The mix helps pay for shared operations. It also limits how neatly production can respond to a geopolitical wish list. A plant cannot simply decide that this year it would prefer more palladium and less of everything else in the ore.

In its outlook of 28 January 2026, Nornickel forecast slightly lower platinum-group-metal production for the year because the composition of its feed would change. This was a forecast issued with its 2025 results, not a completed 2026 production figure. ^[9]

The next batch of rock affects what the business can sell, even when the plant and its customers are already there.

The mine comes with a port, a fleet and an airport

Norilsk’s metal does not find its own way out of the Arctic. Nornickel’s industrial system includes the port at Dudinka, shipping, terminals and aviation. These assets carry supplies into the region as well as products out of it. They serve people who live there, not just the mine’s export contracts.

In its description of the transport system, the company explains how Dudinka’s working year changes with the river. Icebreaking supports sea access during the frozen months. Spring flooding interrupts berth operations; river and sea services resume as the ice passes and water falls. This is a schedule around which the business must organise itself. ^[18]

Nornickel reported 3.6 million tonnes of cargo traffic at Dudinka in 2024 and nearly 878,000 passenger movements at Norilsk Airport. Neither number belongs in a reserve table. Both help explain why an established industrial district has advantages over an isolated prospect with promising rock. Infrastructure that already works is an asset in its own right.

It also costs money to maintain. A prospective new mine may be competing with an incumbent whose transport network has been built over many years, while still needing to offer customers a competitive price. A mineral-rich country is not equally easy to develop in every place. ^[18]

Workers are part of the supply chain

Nornickel’s 2025 reporting put its average workforce above 76,000 people. Its accounts of employment include clinics, medical cover and support that helps keep skilled workers in its operating regions. A July 2025 pay announcement explicitly connected additional rewards for key specialists with lengthy training and a limited pool of qualified staff. ^[18]

Those are company disclosures, not an independent verdict on working conditions. They nevertheless reveal a practical cost of this industry. A replacement supplier needs people who can operate and maintain the plant, as well as ore of a suitable grade. Training them is part of the time required to build an alternative.

The company also reported five fatal accidents in 2025. Mineral power on a national chart can look abstract; the work producing it has consequences for the people doing the mining, maintenance and processing. ^[18]

Russia’s own shortage list is revealing

Russia’s 2050 mineral strategy, as described in the USGS country review, places rare earths, lithium, graphite, titanium, niobium and other materials in an import-dependent group. The review also notes that substantial deposits of many of these materials had already been explored domestically. ^[10]

The country can therefore be rich in known mineral resources and still need imports for particular industries. Developing the deposit must compete for capital, and the product emerging from it must meet a real customer’s needs. A titanium-processing business can need imported feedstock. A battery factory needs usable chemicals, not an entry for lithium in a national geological inventory.

Likhachev’s import-dependence remark belongs in that context. Russian industrial policy is trying to fill missing stages in the supply chain. For some materials, the first customer for a new domestic plant may be a Russian manufacturer seeking a more dependable input, rather than an American company looking for an export deal.

04 / Precious metals, base metals and industrial minerals

Palladium is the dependence already in place

Russia’s strongest position in this comparison is palladium. USGS estimates 84 tonnes of Russian mine production in 2025, out of a world total of about 190 tonnes. Catalytic converters are a major use, and substituting another platinum-group metal can involve changes in performance and formulation. ^[11]

That gives existing Russian production a different significance from the rare-earth projects. Manufacturers have built products and purchasing arrangements around material that already arrives. Replacing it means finding an acceptable alternative within a working industrial system, while that system continues to meet its orders.

It would still be wrong to turn the 44% mine-output share into a claim that Russia could stop 44% of every buyer’s palladium supply overnight. Recycling, inventories and trade routes sit between mining and consumption. The figure identifies the concentration at the beginning of the chain; it does not describe every customer’s immediate exposure.

The reserve figure needs care too. Russia’s 11,000-tonne national estimate covers platinum-group metals together. It is not 11,000 tonnes of palladium, and the national classification notes matter when comparing it with project estimates elsewhere. ^[11]

Gold earns money. Potash helps grow food.

USGS estimates Russian gold mine production at 310 tonnes in 2025, with reserves of 12,000 tonnes. Gold brings financial value and export earnings. Copper and aluminium add other large, established businesses. These materials matter to Russia even when they do not fit the narrower American discussion about vulnerable high-tech inputs. ^[12]

Potash belongs near the centre of the strategic story. Russia’s estimated 2025 production was 10 million tonnes of potassium-oxide equivalent, about a fifth of world output. Its listed reserve was 2 billion tonnes on the same basis. These are chemical-equivalent quantities, not the weight of finished fertiliser bags. ^[13]

Potassium has no substitute in its role as an essential plant nutrient. A farmer may alter application rates or use nutrients already in the soil, but cannot replace the element with another one. That gives a large fertiliser industry an importance quite separate from defence electronics or electric vehicles.

It also widens the group of countries with a reason to care about Russian mineral exports. A government worried about fertiliser access is asking a different question from a magnet manufacturer. Treating every mineral discussion as a race for rare earths leaves that part of Russia’s influence almost invisible.

The refinery has to live somewhere

The satellite image above records Norilsk in July 2017. NASA’s labels identify the city, smelting plant, plume and tailings pond. It is a historical view of the surface, not a measurement of present conditions or a map of the underground deposit. ^[14]

The newer environmental accounts show the scale of the work required. Nornickel reported group sulphur-dioxide emissions of 1.16 million tonnes in 2025, down from 1.269 million in 2024. At Nadezhda, its sulphur project captures gas, turns it into sulphuric acid and neutralises it with limestone, producing gypsum for storage. Those are company-reported results and processes. ^[15]

Installing such equipment creates its own transport problem. In April 2022, Nornickel described moving heat exchangers from Dudinka to the smelter. The smallest unit weighed more than 130 tonnes and was over seven metres across. Even the road needed preparation.

Nornickel said the move required relocating utilities, including gas and electricity networks. ^[19]

The account also describes reinforcing bridges and clearing difficult icy stretches. One heat exchanger took about two days to reach its destination. This was an equipment-delivery report from 2022, rather than a claim about what the completed system achieved later.

It is a useful answer to the idea that processing can simply be added once a country has secured the minerals. Pollution controls arrive as heavy machinery. Roads, power systems and waste facilities have to accommodate them. A buyer seeking a new source of metal is ultimately relying on somebody paying for that work. ^[19]

What a deal would have to survive

Political access is another part of the calculation. A functioning mine and refinery can still become difficult for particular customers to use.

When the United States and Britain announced new restrictions on Russian aluminium, copper and nickel in April 2024, the American Treasury said the goal was to reduce Russian revenue while limiting knock-on costs for its partners and allies. ^[16]

The measures targeted US imports and specified exchange and derivatives services for those metals produced from 13 April 2024. They were defined restrictions with particular dates and activities, rather than a universal ban on every Russian mineral. This is an account of that action, not a substitute for checking the rules governing a transaction today.

The sanctioning countries also have manufacturers that need metal. The policy has to act through trading and financial arrangements around an industry that continues to exist. A prohibited purchase does not make the ore disappear; abundant ore does not make the purchase permissible. ^[16]

Putin’s invitation should be read with those constraints in view. A prospective partner would need more than permission to visit a deposit. The processing route, financing, legal access and customer contract all have to work for the same project. A change in relations could affect some of those conditions. It would not automatically build the missing plant.

Russia’s established palladium, antimony and fertiliser businesses already give other countries reasons to pay attention. Its rare-earth deposits offer another kind of possibility, one that still asks investors to fund the distance between rock and product.