Russia’s Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov told state news agency TASS that the country will produce 480-500 tonnes of gold this year, a figure that would vault Russia past China and make it the world’s largest gold producer.
Analysts inside and outside Russia say they have no idea where those tonnes are coming from.
Kozlov made the claim in an interview ahead of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, held June 3-6. He said 2025 output is still being tallied but that expert estimates put it at 480-485 tonnes.
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“The forecast for this year is 480-500 tons of gold, 2,800-3,000 tons of silver, and 134-137 tons of platinum group metals,” Kozlov added.
The gap between that claim and independent data is vast. The World Gold Council put Russia’s 2024 mine output at roughly 330 tonnes, placing it second globally behind China’s 380 tonnes. For 2025 production to approach 485 tonnes, it would imply an increase of 47% on a year over year basis, before mildly growing this year to reach that 500 tonne target.
No major new Russian deposits have come online that would account for an uplift of up to 170 tonnes over independent 2024 figures.
Two executives at major Russian gold mining companies, speaking anonymously, told Bloomberg they found the number “unexplainable.” Mikhail Leskov, editor-in-chief of Russian industry publication Gold and Technologies, told a Moscow conference in April that Russia produced about 360 tonnes last year, barely above the WGC estimate and well short of what Kozlov is now claiming as a baseline.
Part of the confusion may trace to methodology. Finance Ministry data show that in each of the three years through 2021, Russia’s total gold production, including recycling and scrap, exceeded mine supply by roughly 50 to 60 tonnes. Elevated gold prices and fiscal pressure from the war in Ukraine could have pushed scrap volumes higher. Analysts noted as much, though scrap alone would not close a gap of that magnitude.
Verification is harder now than it was then. Russia stopped releasing official gold-mining statistics after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, stripping outside observers of the data they would need to interrogate the minister’s claim.
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