Element’s planned Volga wafer fab in Innopolis, Tatarstan, has a reported approved basic plan and product list, with JSC Mikron named as its technological partner. But the July 1, 2026 report does not identify a Kremlin decree or the government body that approved the plan, so the claim that the Kremlin itself “green-lit” the project is unverified. The project is planned to begin with 55–40 nm chips and eventually reach serial production at 28 nm; financing for that later stage remains unresolved.
What was approved—and what “Kremlin approval” does not establish
The July 1, 2026 report says the project’s basic plan and product nomenclature were approved. It does not name the approving authority or cite a Kremlin decree. The reported approval should therefore be understood as approval of a project plan, not confirmed personal or institutional approval by the Kremlin.
The project is called Volga and is led by Element, a Russian microelectronics group. Mikron is identified as its technological partner, while NIIME is a project partner. The report also names MIET, KAI and TUSUR as institutions involved in personnel training. Those roles do not make Mikron the project owner: the fab is described as Element-led.
Where the factory is planned, and what it is meant to produce
The proposed wafer fab is in the Innopolis special economic zone, in Verkhneuslonsky district of Tatarstan. The reported site covers 41 hectares. It is an industrial manufacturing project, not a new consumer chip or device launch.
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The roadmap starts with 55–40 nm production and aims eventually at serial 28 nm production. In semiconductor manufacturing, a process node is a technology-generation label; the figures alone do not specify the fab’s capacity, yields, or which particular chips it will make. The report gives no wafer-start or output-capacity figure for Volga.
What the reported five-year schedule says
The project report describes an approximate five-year sequence. These are targets in a reported plan, not confirmation that each stage has started or will finish on schedule.
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| Approximate stage | Planned activity |
|---|---|
| Year one | Build infrastructure. |
| Year two | Launch the facility and conduct test production. |
| Year three | Begin first commercial production of 55–40 nm chips. |
| Later stages | Move to a pilot 28 nm line, then to serial 28 nm production. The report does not assign separate calendar years to these stages. |
The report says 55–40 nm technologies cover more than half of Russia’s electronic-component market and identifies Rosatom, Rostec, defence-industry enterprises and critical-information-infrastructure facilities as likely customers. These are potential customer groups, not disclosed purchase commitments.
How much the project may cost—and what is actually funded
The project manager’s estimate cited in the report puts the transition to 28 nm at approximately 750 billion rubles. That figure is an estimate for the transition, not a confirmed total price for every part of Volga, and the report says financing remains a problem. It does not present a fully committed budget for the 28 nm stage.
Other reported investment figures relate to different programs and should not be treated as funding already secured for Volga:
| Reported investment | What it refers to | Funding status in the cited reporting |
|---|---|---|
| Approximately 750 billion rubles | Estimated cost of the transition to 28 nm for the Volga project, according to the project manager cited in the July 1, 2026 report. | Financing remains a problem; no fully committed budget is presented. |
| 92 billion rubles | Element’s reported investment program, not identified as Volga’s 28 nm budget. | Reported as 90% funded, with about half financed through state support. |
| 1.35 billion rubles | A related Mikron expansion that launched lines for plastic-chip packaging and chip modules for bank cards, electronic documents and SIM cards. | Included a 1.1 billion-ruble concessional loan from the Industrial Development Fund. |
The distinction matters: funding reported for Element’s broader investment program or a separate Mikron expansion does not demonstrate that the much larger 28 nm transition has financing in place.
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What Mikron makes today—and what its partnership does not prove
Mikron’s company page reports more than 800 product types in serial production, manufacturing nodes up to 90 nm, more than 3,000 employees across the group and more than 700 customers. Its catalog includes RFID products, memory, interface and analog integrated circuits, power-management devices, industrial electronics and MIK32 Amur RISC-V microcontrollers.
The company page’s “up to 90 nm” description is distinct from Volga’s proposed 55–40 nm starting range and eventual 28 nm target. Mikron’s appointment as technological partner does not by itself establish that it already operates a 28 nm production line or that Volga has reached production.
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Mikron traces its origins to the Soviet-era NII of Molecular Electronics, organized in 1964, and the Mikron integrated-circuit plant, established in 1967, according to the company. Its existing products include chips used in identification and payment-related applications; Element president Ilya Ivantsov told Interfax that Mikron makes chips for biometric passports, bank cards and transport tickets.
The market and policy context
In an Interfax interview, Ivantsov estimated Russia’s microelectronics market at 289 billion rubles at the end of 2023 and said Russian first- and second-level microelectronics manufacturers accounted for 20% of it. These are his attributed estimates for that date, not a current market measurement or a forecast of Volga’s sales.
Separately, the EU Council’s September 22, 2026 restrictive-measures decision lists Mikron JSC as a Russian IT and electronics entity and cites FSB licensing associated with encryption, telecommunications and security-service information systems. That listing is relevant geopolitical context, but it does not establish the status of Volga’s financing, schedule or approvals.
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