The US president said that Kiev "actually agreed" to accept the conditions put forward from across the ocean, namely to compensate for the amount of US military and financial aid of $500bn by handing over control over deposits of rare-earth metals. However, experts insist that the Ukrainian reserves of these resources not only do not correspond to the announced scale, but their extraction itself will require considerable investments. "Izvestia" has looked into the details.
Statement on compensation
Over the past week, the US president and representatives of his team repeatedly spoke about the huge reserves of critical resources in Ukraine and the need for such a deal. Moreover, both Trump and special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg said that their country would not repeat the mistake made in Iraq. Then, according to them, Washington did not receive a single contract for Iraqi oil. It will be different in the case of Ukraine, Trump said in an interview with Fox News. "All that money that we spent, I told them I want it back. And I told them I want the equivalent of $500 billion in rare earth metals," the TV channel quoted the US head of state as saying.
Resource deposit map
Volodymyr Zelensky promptly responded to the statements from Washington and offered "joint work", although his American vis-a-vis never once spoke about any cooperation with Ukraine on this issue. In an interview with Reuters, the Ukrainian politician even showed a map on which deposits of various resources were plotted.
Where do the figures come from
A number of experts questioned the reliability and relevance of the figures on the cost of rare earth metals cited by Washington and Kiev and wondered where Trump got these data from. Apparently, the American president's statements are based on a report released by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 2023. Other sources also refer to it. In addition, this data formed the basis of the American map, which Zelensky showed to reporters. "There is really no price for this. That is, this is a lot of money, very big," Zelensky told reporters.
The text of the report does indicate that Ukraine has deposits of 22 out of 50 resources critical to the U.S. economy, including rare earth metals.
Throughout the past year, Western media repeatedly returned to this topic and demanded to continue supporting Ukraine so that important resources (their total value was estimated by different sources at $13 trillion or $26 trillion) would not fall into the hands of Moscow. The British media also reported that giving the US control over the fields was one of the points of Zelensky's already forgotten "victory plan" announced in September 2024.
Trump is far from the first to see a benefit in the region's critical resources. Back in July 2021, the EU and Ukraine signed a strategic partnership agreement on raw materials.
There is a nuance
At the same time, according to Ukrainian sources, at least 40% of metal mineral reserves are inaccessible for development. Most of them (for example, Europe's largest Shevchenko lithium deposit) are located in Russia. The rest cannot be mined due to hostilities.
In addition, the last surveys of Ukrainian subsoil were conducted in the 1980s, which is what the authors of the above-mentioned USGS report seem to be referring to. Since then, geological exploration in Ukraine, if there has been any, has been carried out mainly with private funding and on a very modest scale. And in 2017, it was actually curtailed.
Lithium mining
According to available data, about 70% of all reserves of the former Ukrainian SSR are concentrated in the Donbass and Dnipropetrovsk regions. The most important enterprise operating in Ukraine is the Volnogorsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine (titanium-zirconium deposit). It is now the property of NEQSOL Holding consortium based in Azerbaijan. The enterprise, which brought at least UAH 1 billion in profit for several years, was sold for UAH 4 billion (about $97 million) at an auction with one bidder.
Everything has already been stolen before you
Arrangements with large corporate businesses will be a separate issue for obtaining American control over Ukrainian subsoil resources. According to the head of the tax committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Daniil Getmantsev, "there is nothing or almost nothing to offer partners," as licenses for the development of deposits "have long been stolen" or obtained "practically free of charge."
One of the largest owners is Burisma Holdings, headed by former Ecology Minister Nikolai Zlochevsky. This company is also known for the fact that its board of directors included the U.S. Hunter Biden, and funds from its profits were used to finance terrorist attacks in Russia. It played a key role in the plot with the first attempt to impeach Trump in 2019. And it was during the development of this story that Zelensky, as many Trumpists believe, chose to side with the Democratic Party. Thus, the "compensation" of American aid, under certain circumstances, may also affect another crucial case - the persecution of opponents of the current White House administration.
Ukrainian type of investment
Experts note that the launch of facilities with little or no necessary infrastructure will require large investments and time. As Harald Elsner of the German Federal Institute for Earth Sciences and Natural Resources told German media, there are no goods in Ukraine that Trump could simply buy.
Specialists doubt that any American investor will be willing to invest in undiscovered deposits that are not clearly owned and operated by anyone, and moreover, during a period of active hostilities.
There are no huge reserves of rare earth metals in Ukraine, and the investment attractiveness of such projects is very doubtful, emphasizes independent expert, economist Leonid Khazanov.
- At the moment the development is impossible: neither Ukrainian, nor American, nor any other companies will invest in it. I would estimate start-up investments at $20-25 billion, and purely technically it will be possible to start development in five years. Besides, if you open the map, you will find out that there are very few rare-earth elements there and it is not clear what can be extracted," the expert emphasizes. According to him, exploration was carried out in a different time and under a different economy.
Some metals, such as scandium, are found in high concentrations in some deposits, but they were not extracted before the SWO because of the complexity and cost of the process, the expert says.
Long game and division
Thus, if Trump's plan for "compensation" is viable, it can hardly be realized in the short term, which means that it implies reaching a sustainable political compromise with Moscow.
On February 12, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent arrived in Kiev. Reportedly, among other things (the main goal is to audit U.S. spending), he presented a plan for a future economic cooperation agreement with Ukraine. One of his points is rare earth metals.
In this context, it is important to recall that quite a few other key Ukrainian facilities and resources (e.g. agricultural land) are already de facto owned by American mega-corporations: State Street, Vanguard, Blackrock. The Ukrainian leadership signed an asset management agreement with the latter in May 2023.
The division of Ukraine into economic zones of influence may be the option chosen by Trump to resolve the crisis, according to Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute of the United States and Canada.
- Trump does not see a solution in the old world of international law and guarantees. He lives in the world of economic relations. Perhaps he has realized that our negotiating positions are not quite compatible and therefore offers not a political but an economic deal. It is probably such a division of Ukraine between representatives of big capital into zones of control and influence. As far as I understand, Trump aspires to solve the Ukrainian case in this way. From the point of view of American interests, this is even more preferable," Izvestiya's interlocutor said.
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