On July 5, 1829, 14-year-old serf Pavel Popov discovered the first officially registered diamond in Russia on the western slope of the Middle Urals.

This significant event occurred when the teenager was washing gold in the mines located in the basin of the Keyva River. The unusual stone was identified as a 1.5-carat diamond. Soon, two more diamonds were found in the same area.

The stone found by Popov was given to the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who was on a grand tour of Russia. Upon his return to the capital, von Humboldt presented the stone to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas I. The event caused quite a stir among the courtiers.

Subsequently, diamonds were regularly found in the region during the washing of gold and platinum placers up until the 1930s. Up to 18 sites of such finds were identified.

The search for large diamond deposits in Russia continued for almost a century and a half, and only in the mid-1950s were the richest diamond deposits discovered in Yakutia. On August 21, 1954, the first kimberlite pipe outside South Africa was discovered, shortly followed by two additional pipe discoveries. These discoveries marked the beginning of industrial diamond mining in the USSR. Currently, the lion’s share of diamonds mined in Russia comes from the Yakut mining complexes. Additionally, large diamond deposits are located in the Perm region and in the Arkhangelsk region.

In September 2012, the media reported that scientists had declassified information about the world’s largest impact diamond deposit, located on the border of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and Yakutia. These impact diamonds were formed as a result of meteorite impact millions of years ago. According to scientists, this deposit contains trillions of carats of diamonds.