The energy transition has a data problem — or rather, a data solution that most governments would prefer to ignore.
Since 2019, the Business and Human Rights Centre has published the Transition Minerals Tracker: a systematic, publicly available database of human rights abuse allegations at large-scale mining operations extracting the minerals on which decarbonisation depends. Copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, bauxite, iron ore, zinc — and, from this year, rare earth elements. The seventh edition, published in June 2026, covers 299 mining operations across all geographies, tracking 1,226 allegations recorded between 2010 and 2025.
This year’s numbers are stark. In 2025 alone, 329 allegations of abuse were recorded — more than double the 156 documented in 2024. Attacks on human rights defenders at tracked mines rose by over 50%. The Tracker now documents 187 reported attacks on defenders across its full dataset. And for the first time, the report dedicates a specific section to the litigation wave these abuses are generating: in 2025, one in seven allegations led to lawsuits or regulatory action.
The Tracker matters because it converts what companies call “isolated incidents” into a pattern. It is, for journalists and rights advocates, the difference between a story and a case.
Russia in the Tracker: what the data shows
The 2026 Tracker’s Europe and Central Asia section lists eight allegations against Russian mining operations in 2025. The companies involved are Norilsk Nickel, Rosatom, and Metalloinvest.
| Company | Operation | Minerals | Allegations | Categories |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Norilsk Nickel | Komsomolsky mine | Nickel, copper | 2 | W, G |
| Norilsk Nickel | Mayak mine | Nickel, copper | 1 | W |
| Norilsk Nickel | Oktyabrsky mine | Copper, nickel | 1 | W |
| Norilsk Nickel | Taimyrsky mine | Copper, nickel | 1 | G |
| Rosatom | Karnasurt mine | Rare earth elements | 1 | E, G |
| Metalloinvest | Two iron ore entries | Iron ore | 2 | G |
Norilsk Nickel appears with four separate mining operations: Komsomolsky mine (nickel, copper — 2 allegations), Mayak mine (nickel, copper — 1 allegation), Oktyabrsky mine (copper, nickel — 1 allegation), and Taimyrsky mine (copper, nickel — 1 allegation). The allegations are categorised under worker-related impacts and governance issues.
Rosatom appears with its Karnasurt mine — a rare earth element operation — with 1 allegation spanning environmental and governance categories.
Metalloinvest appears with two iron ore entries: JSC Holding Company Metalloinvest and Metalloinvest Management Company LLC, with one allegation each.
In total, Russia accounts for 8 of the 28 allegations recorded for the Europe and Central Asia region in 2025 — approximately 29% of the regional total.
What changed since the 2025 Tracker
The most important change from the previous edition is not simply that Russia appears in the Tracker. It is how Russia appears.
In the 2025 Global Analysis, Russian mining operations were absent from the Europe and Central Asia regional table. The regional dataset included Georgia, Kazakhstan, Portugal and Serbia, with 18 allegations in total. Russia appeared only indirectly in the report, for example as one of the countries where global copper reserves are concentrated, but not as a country with specific mining operations linked to recorded allegations.
In the 2026 edition, Russia enters the Europe and Central Asia dataset through Norilsk Nickel, Rosatom and Metalloinvest. But the Russian entries are not coded as Indigenous Peoples’ rights allegations. They appear through publicly visible worker-related, environmental, governance and transparency categories.
This distinction matters. It does not mean that Indigenous rights impacts are absent. It means that the Tracker’s public-source methodology can only capture allegations that have already become visible in public records, media reporting, lawsuits, regulatory actions or defender-related documentation. In restricted civic space, Indigenous harms are often the least visible form of harm, not necessarily the least significant one.
Russia’s appearance in the Tracker therefore reveals two things at once: first, that Russian transition-mineral operations are now visible within a global accountability dataset; second, that the dataset still cannot fully see Indigenous impacts where public reporting, community advocacy and legal remedies are structurally constrained.
Why this matters for Indigenous peoples in Russia
The Russian entries are therefore best read not as evidence of the absence of Indigenous rights impacts, but as evidence of the limits of visibility in a restricted information environment. The Tracker’s data on Russia does not specifically flag Indigenous peoples’ rights violations in the Russian entries for 2025. This is not because those violations do not exist. It reflects a structural limitation the report itself acknowledges: the Tracker can only capture what is publicly reported, and public reporting on mining impacts in Russia — particularly in the Arctic and northern regions — is severely constrained by shrinking civic space, restrictions on independent media, and the absence of meaningful legal remedies for Indigenous communities.
The Karnasurt mine, operated by Rosatom, is located in the Kola Peninsula — a region with significant Sámi presence. The Taimyrsky and Komsomolsky mines operated by Norilsk Nickel are located in the Krasnoyarsk Krai, on territories historically used by Dolgan, Nganasan, Nenets, and Evenk peoples. These are not incidental geographic facts. The 2020 Norilsk diesel spill — 21,000 tonnes of fuel into the Ambarnaya river — occurred in precisely this region, affecting subsistence fishing and reindeer herding routes used by Indigenous communities for generations. That disaster does not appear in the 2025 Tracker data; it is historical context for what the governance failures being recorded now can produce.
The Tracker’s global data makes the structural argument clearly. Seventeen percent of all 2025 allegations relate to Indigenous peoples’ rights violations — more than double their share of the global population. Fifty-seven new allegations impacting Indigenous peoples were recorded in 2025, including 32 allegations of abuse of the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), 22 allegations of impacts on their local environment, 25 allegations related to land rights, and 11 allegations impacting cultural rights.
Indigenous peoples, the report notes, make up 6% of the world’s population but bear a disproportionate share of the extractive industry’s social costs. That arithmetic holds in Russia as it does in Peru, the DRC, or Indonesia — but in Russia it is less visible because the institutions that would document it operate under severe constraints.
The green transition argument
The 2026 Tracker makes an argument that goes beyond cataloguing harm: the energy transition is accelerating extraction on Indigenous lands, and doing so faster than the accountability frameworks that are supposed to govern it.
This is not an anti-transition argument. It is a structural observation. The copper, nickel, lithium and rare earth elements required for wind turbines, solar panels, EV batteries and power grids are disproportionately located on or near Indigenous territories. When extraction proceeds without consent — when consultation is procedural theatre rather than genuine participation — the green transition reproduces the colonial logic it claims to supersede. Communities absorb the environmental cost; profits flow elsewhere.
Norilsk Nickel is Russia’s dominant producer of nickel and palladium — both listed as transition-critical minerals. Its operations in the Taimyr Peninsula are central to global nickel supply chains. The company’s metals are embedded in batteries and electronics manufactured across Europe and Asia. The governance failures documented in the Tracker — at mines that feed these supply chains — are not contained to Russia’s domestic regulatory space. They are supply chain risks, ESG risks, and legal risks for the companies and investors downstream.
Rosatom’s presence in the Tracker under rare earth elements is particularly significant given the current geopolitical scramble for REE supply chains. As the 2026 report notes, Western governments have been accelerating mineral partnerships and domestic permitting in an explicit effort to counter Chinese REE dominance. Where Rosatom fits in these reconfiguring supply chains — and what accountability standards apply — is a question that has not been adequately asked.
What the Tracker cannot see
The 2026 report is explicit about its methodological limits. It covers large-scale, legally licensed mining operations. It relies on publicly available information. In geographies where civic space is restricted, where defenders face reprisals, and where independent media has been systematically dismantled, the Tracker captures only what has already survived significant barriers to disclosure.
Russia in 2025 sits at the extreme end of that spectrum. The eight allegations recorded represent a floor, not a ceiling. They document what managed to become public despite — not because of — the information environment in which they occurred.
For advocates and journalists working on Russia’s Arctic and northern regions, the Tracker’s value is therefore double. The data it contains is significant. And the gap between that data and the likely reality of mining impacts on Indigenous communities in restricted jurisdictions is itself a story — one that requires different methodologies, different sources, and different institutional partnerships to tell.
What to watch
Several threads in the 2026 Tracker are worth following in the Russian context.
The Karnasurt REE mine operated by Rosatom is newly added to the Tracker this year. As rare earth element operations expand globally, and as Rosatom seeks international positioning in the critical minerals sector, the governance record of its domestic operations becomes relevant to international partners and investors.
The Taimyrsky and Komsomolsky operations of Norilsk Nickel appear in the 2025 dataset and are located in a region where earlier industrial failures have already demonstrated the consequences of weak governance and inadequate accountability. Persistent presence in monitoring datasets should be read not as a statistical footnote, but as a signal of structural risk.
Metalloinvest’s two entries under governance and transparency deserve attention from corporate accountability researchers. Governance failures in iron ore extraction, in the absence of remediation, tend to escalate.
And the broader regional picture matters: Europe and Central Asia recorded 28 allegations in 2025, with worker impacts dominating the data. Russia’s 8 allegations are partly masked by the scale of Ukraine’s Yuvileyna mine entry, which recorded 13 worker-related allegations in a conflict-zone context. Disaggregating the regional picture matters for understanding where accountability pressures are concentrated and where they are absent.
A note on the Tracker as a tool
The Business and Human Rights Centre Transition Minerals Tracker is publicly accessible and updated annually. For journalists and advocates, it is a searchable reference for corporate accountability claims, a source for litigation context, and an evidentiary baseline for conversations with investors and regulators.
It is not a comprehensive record of harm. It is the part of the record that survived the conditions under which it was created. In restricted jurisdictions, that distinction matters — and making it explicit is part of what responsible use of the data requires.
Source: Business and Human Rights Centre, Transition Minerals Tracker: Key Findings 2026, June 2026. All figures and company references are drawn from the published report.