Now that the United States has concluded a deal to share the rights Ukraine’s mineral reserves -Including elements crucial for a series of high-tech applications, from driving electric vehicles to producing war aircraft and Tanks-the path to actually extracting the minerals is loaded with formidable challenges and uncertainty.
And the end of the war with Russia, which has been raging for more than three years, is only the first obstacle to be overcome before the United States can realize possible windfall.
Maps those trillions of dollars Mineral deposits spread over Ukraine – Including in areas occupied by Russian troops – are largely based on outdated studies, and the correct surveys can take a few years to complete, experts said. The deposits may not be easy to extract; Investors will have to pump billions in Ukraine to remove the drugs from the earth.
And the energy infrastructure of the nation – which is still bombed by Russian rockets and drones – will have to be repaired and upgraded to offer the enormous amounts of power needed to support mining activities.
President Trump has said that the United States will pick hundreds of billions of dollars from the deal, much higher than the $ 1 billion a year that Ukraine earns from royalties from its natural resources.
Yet the potential benefit for the United States is enormous if Washington tries to find a way to limit its vulnerability to China’s dominance in the extraction and processing of minerals. China manages more than 90 percent of global processing and 60 percent of mining of the rare earth minerals used in products such as mobile phones and electric vehicles.
“One of the things that is attractive to Ukraine is worldwide, many of the reserves are cried by the Chinese and Ukraine is full of untouched potential,” said Gracelin Baskaran, the director of the Critalal Minerals Security Program in the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The deal also increases the prospect of gas and oil development in the Black Sea and perhaps even the sea of Azov, which offers the most direct opportunities for profitable projects, Nataliia Shapoval, a vice -president to KYIV School of Economics.
It has the potential to be a good deal for both Ukraine and the United States, she said.
“It sets the state for recovery, for investments, for the development of the Black Sea region,” she said. The adjacent Romania is already developing large natural gas deposits in the Black Sea.
But many of the details have yet to be worked out and will depend on the course of the war and the form of a potential peace agreement.
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zensky, gave the prospect for the first time last year to offer an interest in the natural resources of his country as a way to offer the United States a tangible reason to support the fight of his country.
But disagreements about the form of a deal inflamed tensions between the Lord Zensky and Mr. Trump just when the White House started direct conversations with President Vladimir V. Putin van Russia.
Against that background, the initial proposal of the White House was sentenced by some as extortion – forcing the nation that was the victim of aggression to pay recovery for earlier American support without guarantees for future safety support.
Kyiv resisted and the deal was reworked.
The government of Ukraine estimates that the country has 5 percent From the world’s most critical raw materials – including lithium, titanium, uranium and graphite. The US Geological Survey showed that Ukraine has deposited deposits of 20 of the 50 minerals as crucial for the economic development and defense of America.
But Mrs. Baskaran warned that it could take a few years before the correct surveys were carried out.
“There can be many more economically feasible deposits, or it may be that they are not viable,” she said, adding: “It takes an average of 18 years after finding a feasible down payment to go to extraction.”
Martin Jackson, head of the raw materials of the battery at Cru, a research agency for raw materials, said that a potential mine in Polokhivske, Ukraine, has a permit to produce what would be about 2 percent of the global delivery of lithium, a crucial ingredient for batteries.
However, he said that the characteristic is not enough to ensure that the mine continues, even if it would be an important source for Europe. Depressive prices for the mineral stop the development of less risky projects around the world.
“The biggest obstacle here is actually the lithium market,” he said.
Denys Aloshyn, Chief Strategy Officer for Uklithiummining, the owner of the mine, said that the company acquired its license for the mine in 2017 and hoped to extract Lithium by 2029, but was still needed to collect $ 350 million to complete the project, an effort that delayed the war.
He said he thought the mineral agreement with the United States “offered an opportunity for the Ukrainian mining sector, seen how much capital was needed to make a project succeed.
“Ukraine missed foreign direct investments historically,” he said, but he warned that substantial progress was unlikely as long as the war is raging.
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