India is looking to Russia to help plug some real gaps in its critical minerals supply. The topic is back on the table this week, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin sit down for talks. On paper it sounds like just another diplomatic meeting. But there’s an actual negotiating history behind it, and India’s motivation is pretty concrete: diversify where its minerals come from, and grab a bigger share of the processing and value-addition work along the way.
Why This Is Coming Up Now
This isn’t a cold start. Back in December 2025, the two countries produced something called the India-Russia 2030 Vision roadmap. It put critical minerals right up there with energy, nuclear cooperation and connectivity as a priority for the relationship. By May 2026, Reuters was reporting that India and Russia were in advanced talks on a preliminary agreement. That deal was set to cover exploration, processing and technological cooperation, with lithium and rare earths as the main focus. Sources at the time said the two governments could sign it within a couple of months.
That timeline slipped, which happens with these things. But the current round of talks, with lithium, nickel and molybdenum reportedly on the agenda, suggests both sides are still working toward something concrete rather than letting it quietly die.
Why India Actually Needs This
India’s problem is pretty specific. For minerals like lithium, nickel and cobalt, the country is essentially 100% import dependent. A huge chunk of those imports currently flow through China. That’s not a comfortable position for a country trying to build out EV manufacturing and clean energy infrastructure at the scale India wants to.
There’s also a geopolitical layer here that’s hard to ignore. The US slapped a 50% tariff on Indian imports this year over India’s continued purchases of Russian oil. Instead of that pressure pulling the two countries apart, the relationship has actually kept expanding into new areas, critical minerals being one of them. Maybe that’s a deliberate hedge, or maybe India is just taking wins where it can find them. Either way, the practical effect is the same: New Delhi keeps adding options to its mineral sourcing strategy instead of narrowing them.
The Part Most People Miss About Russia’s Minerals
Here’s the twist that doesn’t get mentioned enough. Russia holds enormous mineral wealth on paper, something like 28.5 million metric tons of rare earth metals and over 650 million metric tons of other rare metals, according to its own Natural Resources Ministry. But Russia’s actual production is tiny. The country consumes around 3,000 metric tons of rare earths a year. It produces only about 50 metric tons of that domestically, which means it imports more than 98% of what it uses.
So this isn’t a case of Russia sitting on a stockpile it’s ready to ship out. Putin ordered his government last November to draw up a roadmap for developing the country’s rare earth industry, and that build-out is still in its early stages. What India is really betting on is Russia’s geology and long-term development potential, not some ready-to-go supply that exists today.
What’s Actually on the Table
The talks reportedly cover exploration, processing technology, and the kind of institutional groundwork that eventually turns a political relationship into an actual supply chain. One concrete example already exists. India’s CSIR-IMMT and Russia’s Giredmet run a joint research collaboration on advanced mineral processing and rare earth metallurgy. There’s also been talk of India revisiting a lithium exploration project in Mali that Russia’s Rosatom operates, assuming the security situation there stabilizes enough to make it viable again.
It’s worth being honest about where India actually stands on execution, though. The country has more than 20 minerals formally classified as critical to its economy. Yet India’s only fully operational overseas mineral project right now is a lithium exploration agreement covering five blocks in Argentina, which it signed back in 2024. Everything else, including this Russia relationship, is still in the pipeline rather than delivering minerals.
What to Watch
The real test isn’t whether Modi and Putin have a good meeting this week. It’s whether India and Russia actually sign the preliminary agreement Reuters first reported back in May. From there, the question becomes whether that agreement turns into funded exploration and processing projects, rather than another roadmap that sits on a shelf. Given Russia’s own thin production numbers, there’s also a fair question about how quickly any Russian supply could realistically start flowing to India, even if both sides sign everything on schedule.
For now, what exists is intent, a research partnership, and a negotiating history stretching back almost a year. Whether this becomes India’s next real source of critical minerals, or just one more item on a long list of minerals diplomacy that hasn’t converted into actual tonnes, is still an open question.
