Description
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine transformed global energy politics, but less attention has been paid to Moscow’s position in the emerging critical-minerals order. This proposed paper asks how war, sanctions, and Western de-risking have altered Russia’s capacity to derive geopolitical leverage from mineral production and partnerships across the Global South. Rather than equating mineral endowments with power, it conceptualizes mineral power as relational: it depends on a state’s position across extraction, processing, finance, technology, logistics, and market access. Focusing comparatively on palladium and nickel, the paper examines two supply chains in which Russia remains significant but occupies markedly different structural positions. In palladium, highly concentrated production sustains Russian leverage alongside Southern African producers. In nickel, the rise of Indonesia and China-centered processing networks increasingly constrains it. Russia therefore combines substantial mineral capabilities with growing restrictions on capital, technology and Western markets. Its post-2022 response has included efforts to embed mineral cooperation within wider projects of multipolarity and partnership with non-Western states, including through BRICS+ and Russia-Africa relations. The paper argues that this shift is best understood as a contested re-networking of strategic supply chains. Conceptually, it contributes to geoeconomic debates by showing that resource power rests not on reserves alone but on the capacity to maintain and reorganize cross-border networks.