Niger’s military regime on Sunday announced it was putting uranium produced by Somair — a subsidiary of French giant Orana before the regime nationalised it in June — on the international market.

Uranium mining in Niger is at the centre of a standoff between the junta that took power in 2023 and Orano, which is 90-percent owned by the French government and has operated mines in Niger for decades.

The news was announced on state television Tele Sahel in a report Sunday evening citing comments by head of the junta General Abdourahamane Tiani.

Tiani, the report said, had claimed “Niger’s legitimate right to dispose of its natural riches to sell them to whoever wants to buy them, under the rules of the market, in complete independence”.

Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said in July that Moscow wanted to mine uranium in Niger.

Since the junta took power in a 2023 coup, Niger has turned to Russia, which commands the world’s largest arsenal of atomic weapons, for help in fighting the west African country’s jihadist insurgency.

At the same time it has turned its back on former colonial power France, which it accused of supporting separatist groups.

In 2024, Niger removed Orano’s operational control of its three main mines in the country: Somair, Cominak and Imouraren, which has one of the largest uranium deposits in the world.

Orano officially retains a 60 percent stake in the subsidiaries, and has undertaken various arbitration procedures to try to win back operational control.

Niger in 2022 accounted for about a quarter of the natural uranium supplied to European nuclear power plants, according to data from the atomic organisation Euratom.