Executive Summary
Russia does not capture Western mines; it inherits their vacancies. In December 2025, Niger’s state uranium company signed a cooperation agreement with Rosatom’s Uranium One Group to develop new uranium deposits. This occurred six months after Niger nationalised Somaïr, its main uranium venture, previously controlled by France’s Orano. The agreement did not transfer Somaïr to Russia. It opened a different route: Russian state-linked capital entered through a sovereign vehicle after the French operator had lost control, gaining commercial access without directly replacing the Western operator.
For London, the problem is not a lack of tools: sanctions, screening, and sourcing rules all exist, but none treat displacement and arrival as a single strategic event. Britain can identify the company, regulate the commodity, and monitor the investor, and still miss the moment control shifts.
Key Points and Numbers
- Orano held a 63.4% stake in Somaïr before Niger nationalised the venture in June 2025.
- Orano reported that approximately 1,050 tonnes of uranium concentrate left Somaïr in November 2025, following an ICSID order prohibiting the sale or transfer of the material.
- TNUC and Uranium One signed an agreement on permits, exploration, and future mines on 9 December 2025, which did not constitute a direct takeover of Somaïr.
- A total of 77 days elapsed between that agreement and Britain’s designation of Rosatom Energy Projects and Rusatom Overseas on 24 February 2026.
- Mali’s industrial gold output fell by 22.9% from 54.8 to 42.2 tonnes, with output from the Loulo-Gounkoto mine alone dropping from 22.5 to 5.5 tonnes.
Analysis:
Niger: Russia did not need Somaïr
Niger nationalised Somaïr in June 2025 after two years of deteriorating relations with Orano, which had held 63.4%. In September of that same year, an ICSID tribunal ordered Niger not to sell or transfer the uranium held by Somaïr. Two months later, roughly 1050 tonnes of yellowcake left the site by convoy towards Togo, in what Orano claimed was a breach of the order.
The Russian opening was separate. Niger had created TNUC in September 2024 as a state vehicle for the uranium value chain. On December 9 2025, TNUC signed a memorandum with Rosatom’s Uranium One group to obtain permits, explore and develop new operations, not to take over Somaïr.
Russia did not acquire Somaïr. It entered after the Western operator had already lost control, through a Nigerien state vehicle and projects yet to reach production: cheaper than seizure, and harder to price as risk.
From security presence to commercial access
This model is more flexible than the classic Wagner-for-concessions bargain: the group providing security does not have to be the group securing the commercial deal. In Mali, the two are intertwined: Africa Corps’ largest deployment sits alongside the mining concessions and mineral contracts Carnegie documents. Niger is different: a 100-strong contingent arrived in April 2024, TNUC followed five months later; Uranium One’s agreement came more than a year after that. Moscow provides security where it chooses to; separate firms can enter once Western withdrawal has reduced competition.
Mali shows the cost of this first stage alone. Barrick’s dispute with Bamako was resource nationalism, not a Russian operation, yet Loulo-Gounkoto’s output fell from 22.5 to 5.5 tonnes and Mali’s industrial gold production fell 22.9%. Russia need not replace a Western company for Russia to benefit; the opening exists the moment Western capacity disappears.
London is monitoring the wrong unit of analysis
Britain’s existing monitoring instruments focus on actors, acquisitions, supply chains, financial flows, and shipping routes. Yet Russian access can emerge through a different mechanism: losing control of the asset itself. An operator exists, a sector is restructured, a state vehicle is created, a Russian firm signs; no single step triggers Britain’s Russia policy, but together they amount to a geopolitical transfer of capacity.
Britain subject Rosatom Energy Projects and Rusatom Overseas to asset freezes under its Russia sanctions regime on 24 February 2026, rather than targeting Uranium One, illustrating the structural gap rather than a failure to act. The National Security and Investment Act covers civil nuclear among 17 sectors, but its mandatory regime concerns UK-connected acquisitions, not foreign-to-foreign transfers. From 20 May 2026, Britain restricted Russian-origin uranium imports as a commodity control, while the London Bullion Market Association’s (LBMA) standards target money laundering and human rights abuses rather than geopolitical displacement.
Neither treats geopolitical substitution as a standalone risk, and by the time London has something to sanction, the transfer may already have happened. That matters because the Critical Minerals Strategy already treats these resources as a national security question. Yet, the systems protecting that resilience are actor-centric while the shift they must catch is asset-centric.
Policy Implications
1-Track the vacancy, not just the actor: FCDO and HM Treasury should monitor strategic assets whose Western operators are nationalised or stripped of control in high-risk jurisdictions, to spot early where state-linked competitors could enter.
2-Make loss-of-control reporting event: London-listed companies with material exposures to strategic resources should disclose major state-driven ownership changes, triggered by the operator’s disappearance, not a sanctioned entity’s later arrival.
3-Make asset control part of Russia policy: Critical-minerals assessments should be integrated with sanctions intelligence, so a change of control over a strategic asset triggers an assessment of who stands to inherit it.
Britain’s Russia policy follows Russian actors, and the Sahel is showing why it also needs to follow the assets they are positioned to inherit.
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