Ukraine has agreed to hand over some of its rare minerals over to the US – but some key factors could mean Donald Trump’s policy victory may not give him the results he wants
The Trump administration is hailing a policy victory ahead of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the White House on Friday to sign a minerals deal between the two nations.
President Trump made the announcement at start of the first cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday, hailing the deal as “a very big agreement”. The Republican president has long complained that the United States has spent too much taxpayer money to support Ukraine in the war with Russia that began when the Kremlin invaded three years ago.
Zelensky has long spoken of Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, with some in Ukraine perhaps hoping the mineral deal will be a step towards US support of that move or some concessions from Russia in a future peace deal. But Trump has rubbished this possibility and – despite Zelensky’s hopes – the minerals deal has been framed by the American president as a chance for Kyiv to pay back the US for aid already sent for the war effort under former Democratic president Joe Biden.
The deal would give the US access to so-called rare earth deposits in Ukraine. Zelensky said today a framework had been agreed between the two countries which would see Ukraine contribute 50% of its natural resource revenues to a jointly-owned fund. But Trump’s claims of a policy victory might not be mirrored in the deal’s actual outcomes according to one expert. Last year, the Ukrainian Geological Survey said Ukraine has a healthy supply of rare minerals, but the US Geological Survey made no mention of this in its own report in 2021.
Bloomberg’s regional expert Javier Blas said Ukraine has “scored earth”, but not “rare earths”. The term ‘rare earths’ refers specifically to 17 metallic element which “have unusual fluorescent, conductive, and magnetic properties which make them very useful when alloyed or mixed”, the Science History Institute Museum and Library explained.
The rare earths are: cerium, dysprosium, erbium, europium, gadolinium, holmium, lanthanum, lutetium, neodymium, praseodymium, promethium, samarium, scandium, terbium, thulium, ytterbium, and yttrium. These metals are used in a range of products; terbium is used in medical imaging, samarium in optical laser, cerium in TVs and neodymium in anything from EV batteries and lasers.
The Institute of Geology said Ukraine has yttrium, cerium, lanthanum and cerium. There is some indication in EU-funded research that it has scandium reserves, which is used in a versatile list of products including those produced by the aerospace industry.
Another problem is that millions would need to be invested in mapping the minerals, which could take years, and also require expensive extraction methods. A report in the Mail suggests that there has not been an adequate modern assessment of Ukraine’s mineral reserves for decades and the rating agency S&P said some of the Ukrainian government projections are based on Soviet Union-era estimates.
Additionally, the Ukrainian Geological Survey and the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine said in its report ‘Ukraine: Mining Investment Opportunities’ that it could require a $300 million injection to extract rare earths from an area in war-hit Zaporizhzhia.
The ex-boss of the Ukrainian Geological Survey also said more recent mapping used old methods and there was no real modern assessment of the supply. The length of time it could take to do this might mean Trump’s presidency is at an end when the US begins to reap the rewards of the minerals deal with Ukraine.
But despite this, the Trump administration could factor in Ukraine’s exports. “Ukraine is a significant global supplier of titanium and is a potential source of over 20 critical raw materials,” the European Commission said. It is also high on the list of top producers of titanium, graphite and lithium, according to World Mining Data.
And Elena Safirova, a Ukraine specialist at the US Geological Survey, said according to France 24 that Ukraine has “several deposits containing rare earth elements” that are currently untapped.
Ahead of a potential face-to-face meeting with Putin, meanwhile, Trump said he hopes to reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, but did not give details on what concessions he would ask the two sides to make. How any potential peace deal may arise, what Ukraine and Russia may have to give away and what further potential demands Trump may make remains to be seen.
