OREANDA-NEWS. July 2, 2007. OJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel (“Norilsk Nickel” or the “Company”) today announced that 201,089,154 common shares of LionOre Mining International Ltd (“LionOre”) (Toronto Stock Exchange symbol: “LIM”; London Stock Exchange symbol: “LOR”; Botswana Stock Exchange symbol: “LIONORE”), representing approximately 90% of the LionOre common shares outstanding, were deposited to Norilsk Nickel's offer to acquire all of the outstanding common shares of LionOre for Cdn$27.50 in cash per share by the expiry time of the offer on June 28, 2007.

All of the conditions of the offer having now been satisfied, Norilsk Nickel, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, has taken up all of the LionOre shares that were deposited to the offer.

“We are pleased by this strong response from LionOre shareholders to our offer and will now proceed to complete this transaction and bring LionOre into the Norilsk Nickel Group. This addition to the Group brings growth in nickel, further diversifies our international presence, and will generate important synergy contributions to Norilsk Nickel's long term development,” said Norilsk Nickel’s General Director, Denis Morozov.

In order to provide LionOre shareholders who have not yet accepted the offer with more time to do so, Norilsk Nickel has extended the expiry time of the offer to 8:00 p.m. (Toronto time) on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. A second notice of extension will be mailed to shareholders as soon as practicable and will be made available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

On May 23, 2007, Norilsk Nickel announced its increased all-cash offer to acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of LionOre for aggregate cash consideration of approximately Cdn$6.8 billion.

Full particulars of the offer are set out in the offer and offering circular as amended by the notice of variation and notices of extension, each as filed by Norilsk Nickel. These documents are available on the Canadian Securities Administrator’s website at www.sedar.com under LionOre’s company profile, and on the Company’s website at www.nornik.ru/en.