Employees deal with their work in the granite mine on February 26, 2025 in the Zhytomyr region in Ukraine.
Liberov staff | Libkos Getty images
Ukraine could reverse the wave in rocky relations with the USA, offering the administration of President Donald Trump access to their critical minerals as part of broader peace negotiations, but experts warn that the assessment of questions remain around the values and availability of such deposits.
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, intends to go to Washington Develop and monetize the deposits of Ukraine together Earth rare, critical minerals, oil, gas and other natural resources.
Trump said earlier that he saw a contract as compensation for the US help to Ukraine during the war with Russia and He claimed that the contract was worth $ 500 billion.
Speaking on Thursday, the US president also said that the economic pact serves to prevent further Russian aggression. “We are back because we will be there, we will work in the country. This is a great thing for them, “he said in an oval office.
“Framework agreement” As Ukraine described it On Wednesday, however, no $ 500 billion was not mentioned or a wider value of the contract. Ukraine has already questioned that this is such a sum.
That Ukraine has “significant deposits of rare lands”, Like the United Nations Organization UnitsIt is not generally questioned. The country is perceived as a treasury of deposits of rare lands, such as lithium and cobalt – widely used in batteries for electronic devices – as well as in the scandium (aluminum alloy), graphite (used in the production of electric vehicle batteries), tantulum (also used in electronic devices) and Niobium, which is used for a permanent and fixing.
“About 5% of all” critical raw materials “in the world are in Ukraine, which covers only 0.4 percent of the Earth's surface,” said in 2022 the Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Svetlana Grinchuk.
However, analysts say, however, that there are many questions unanswered to the size of Ukraine earthly lands and strategic minerals, as well as how available Russia will receive for the occupation of Ukraine and the mass process of reconstruction in which the country will have war.
They also question the final value of the US-Ukrain agreement, taking into account the changing demand for such natural resources.
Natalia Shapoval, head of the KSE Institute, Think Tank at the Kiev School of Economics, who developed a database of critical minerals of Ukraine, said that President Trump's request for deposits worth $ 500 billion was “theoretically possible”.
“I think there will be some adaptation to the character that Trump mentioned,” said Shapoval CNBC through a video combination at the beginning of this month. However, she questioned the validity of some current valuations from Soviet times.
“Other estimates are still confidential,” she continued. “The numbers are lower there and may not be in trillions.”
Not so good
Complication of matters, however, is the location of the mineral wealth of Ukraine, the most located in the territories largely for Russian territories of Luhansk and Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, as well as the central Dompropetrovsk, and in the southern, as well as partly the Russian district of Zaporizhia.
In these areas, an active war was raging, which makes access dependent on the result of the war and all subsequent peace agreements, but they are heavily mined, which means that mining in the future is very difficult.
According to experts from the Atlantic Council, there was a lot of noise about the minerals of Ukraine “lands”, but the country does not have large amounts of rare elements.
“Instead, it has significant reserves of titanium, graphite and lithium, which are the basic resources for the American defense industry and the wider advanced technology economy”, Reed Blakemore, Director of Research and Programs at Global Energy Center of the Atlantic Council, He commented on Wednesday online.
He noted, however, that access to these minerals along with other aluminum and hydrocarbon reserves depends on the result of the ongoing war.
“A significant part of these resources, both active and underexposed, are located in the eastern part of Ukraine,” said Reed.
View of granite excavated on February 26, 2025 in the Zhytomyr region in Ukraine.
Liberov staff | Libkos Getty images
Geopolitical expert Robert Muggah, founder of the advisory group SECDEV and a frequent commentator on the critical minerals of Ukraine, noted at the beginning of this week that although Ukraine can be an attractive proposition for investment partners who want to earn on critical minerals “actually getting him out of the ground is a different matter.”
“Russia currently occupies over 60% of Ukrainian coal mines, and part of the deposit of Caes, lithium, manganese and rare (which) potentially denies the income in Ukraine and deepens the Russian revenues between supply chains”, ” said on x.
Even after mineral extraction, there will be additional obstacles to overcome.
“China remain far, the dominant market force in the minerals of refining and processing,” noted the Reed Council of the Atlantic on Wednesday.
“To really risk the supply chain of American minerals, you probably need a larger infrastructure to ensure that the newly acquired mineral ore does not flow towards Beijing.” He currently stated: “The United States lacks infrastructure for transport and improvement of these ores in Europe or North America on a scale.”
– Karen Gilchrist from CNBC contributed to this report.