Russian officials have announced that negotiations regarding rare earth processing are currently underway with China and India!

Source: TASS, July 29.

Alexander Maslennikov, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council, confirmed in an interview with The Gazette that Russia is conducting negotiations with China, India, as well as Middle Eastern countries, on a deep-processing project for rare earth metals within the Angara-Yenisei Rare Earth Cluster.

Maslennikov emphasized that certain limitations do exist: “These include challenges related to technology acquisition, payment mechanisms, and the risk of secondary sanctions from the United States and the European Union."

However, as he noted, even under these conditions, "partners are willing to cooperate."

Participants from the Russian side include “Rusal,” “Norilsk Nickel,” “Areal,” the Russian Technologies Group, Rosatom State Corporation, among others—though this list is not exhaustive.

According to Maslennikov, land preparation, engineering design, and planning work are currently underway. “For large-scale industrial projects, the goal is to enter the construction phase directly around 2028.”

The Angara-Yenisei Rare Earth Cluster is a major rare earth deposit in Siberia and serves as the core planned area for Russia’s development of a domestic rare earth industry chain.

Russia possesses substantial rare earth reserves but lacks mature, large-scale refining, separation, and deep-processing capabilities. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rare earth processing industry chain was severed, leaving Russia heavily reliant on imported finished rare earth products.

Russia's strategic objective is to establish a complete domestic rare earth supply chain—from mining to beneficiation to deep processing—by 2030, thereby reducing external dependence and ensuring a stable supply of critical metals needed for defense and new energy industries.

However, due to constraints in domestic capital and technology, it is difficult to rapidly implement large-scale deep-processing facilities; thus, Russia is proactively seeking international partners.

India’s goal is to build an independent rare earth supply chain, aiming to reduce reliance on overseas rare earth finished goods, and to develop its new energy and defense-grade permanent magnet industries.

India’s advantage: a vast potential downstream market.

Its weakness: almost no mature rare earth separation and smelting technologies.

It must be clarified that the negotiations between Russia-China and Russia-India are parallel tracks, not a tripartite joint project. Russia is negotiating separately with both countries and has not proposed a “Russia-China-India joint development” plan.

Official Chinese stance (diplomatic position):

Supports equal, mutually beneficial commercial cooperation on critical minerals between China and Russia. Under the framework of the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination in the new era between China and Russia, cooperation is pursued without targeting any third party.

All cooperation must comply with Chinese laws, regulations, and export control rules, and operate through market-driven mechanisms.

Two non-negotiable core red lines (most important):

1. The core technologies for rare earth metallurgy and separation must not be exported without restriction. China has already included rare earth extraction, hydrometallurgical separation, and high-purity rare earth production processes in its list of restricted/prohibited export technologies.

2. Cooperation must meet the requirement for resource return.

The core demand of Chinese enterprises participating in the project: priority and stable supply of Siberian rare earth ores or semi-finished products to China’s domestic industrial chain.

If the Russian proposal requires that all deep-processed final products remain in Russia and be sold in India and other markets, with raw materials excluded from supply to China, the project will not receive support at the Chinese policy level.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1872002599600138/

Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of the author.