For Ukraine, they are a boost to play in a current call to President Trump for more financial and military support. To Mr. Trump, they should be late for payment for billions of dollars engaged in the Kyiv war effort.
Be that as it may, the vast and precious mineral resources of Ukraine have suddenly became an important component in the maneuver of the future of the country.
During last week, Trump repeatedly pushed the idea of exchanging American aid for critical minerals in Ukraine. He said Fox News On Monday, he wanted “the equivalent of $ 500 billion in rare land”, a group of crucial minerals for many high -tech products, in exchange for American aid. Ukraine had “essentially agreed to do so,” he said.
For Ukraine, it is a sign of hope that Mr. Trump, a long -standing skeptic of the American aid in Kyiv, could find a path to maintain the support he finds pleasant to taste. But it is always possible that the famous Mercurial President is changing his mind, and even his statements on an agreement have been ambiguous to find out if he wants Ukraine minerals for past or future help – or a combination of the two.
Mr. Trump’s proposal followed a campaign launched by kyiv in the fall to call on the state of mind focused on the business of the American president by discussing lucrative energy agreements and stressing that the defense of Ukraine aligned American economic interests.
The campaign included a meeting between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky and trips to the United States by Ukrainian officials to organize agreements to exploit lithium and titanium deposits – vital for technology production such as electric batteries. This also involved withdrawing influential political figures such as the Republican senator Lindsey Graham.
The campaign was launched after politically connected American investors began to demonstrate their interest in Ukraine’s underground wealth in late 2023, despite the war that has been raging since 2022. A consortium including Techmet, an energy investment company belonging Partly in the US government, and Ronald S. Lauder, a rich friend of Mr. Trump, has signed up with kyiv to bid on a Ukrainian lithium field, according to a letter to Mr. Zelensky examined by the New York Times.
Mr. Lauder, an heir to the cosmetics who planted the idea in Mr. Trump’s mind to buy Greenland of resources directly, said a spokesperson he had not discussed Directly Ukrainian minerals with Trump, but “raised the question with stakeholders in the United States and Ukraine for many years until today. »»
While Mr. Trump pushes peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, kyiv’s campaign around critical minerals underlined Mr. Zelensky’s evolutionary strategy to maintain American support. Getting away from the moral calls he used with the Biden administration, he adopted a more transactional approach closer to Mr. Trump’s style. Zelensky recently said that he would also be interested in buying American liquefied natural gas.
Wednesday, the American secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, met Mr. Zelensky in kyiv to discuss what could look like an agreement for the minerals of Ukraine, marking the first visit of a manager of the Trump administration in Ukraine. Bessent presented Mr. Zelensky a project of an economic cooperation agreement, adding that “in exchange for this agreement, the United States will continue to provide significant support for Ukraine”.
Zelensky said he hoped to finalize an agreement at the Munich security conference later this week. “We will do everything so that our teams can quickly accept and sign this document,” he told journalists at a press conference alongside Mr. Bessent on Wednesday evening.
The idea of taking advantage of Ukraine mineral resources took shape last summer. Kyiv was developing his “victory plan”, a strategy aimed at putting an end to war under the terms favorable to Ukraine, and wanted to convince his allies to support their support despite the fatigue of war.
Ukrainian officials were particularly concerned about a potential return to power of Mr. Trump, who had promised to cut military and financial assistance to Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials and legislators.
Their attention was drawn to an argument expressed by an ally of Trump: Mr. Graham, who practiced that Ukraine “was seated on a gold mine” of critical minerals. “If we help Ukraine now, they could become the best trading partner we have ever dreamed of”, he said Last June. He strengthened his message in a video With Mr. Zelensky in September.
Ukrainian authorities say the country has almost half of the 50 minerals that the United States has identified as criticism for its economy and national security. THE Kyiv economy school Said that Ukraine has the largest titanium reserves in Europe and a third of the continent’s lithium reserves.
Groups like DryA Canadian company, has evaluated the reserves of several dollars. But some deposits are inaccessible because they are in land occupied by Russia. And experts warn that exploitation of mineral reserves could be an expensive and prolonged process, with new surveys necessary to precisely assess their potential.
In a letter of November 2023 to Mr. Zelensky, Brian Menell, head of Techmet, asked for help to launch an attempt to operate a lithium field belonging to the State in the center of Ukraine. The letter appointed Mr. Lauder, the Texas Capital Capital Investment Company and other American and international investors as an acquisition.
Mr. Menell and other energy leaders encounter Mr. Zelensky in New York in September. We do not know if they have discussed the offer, which has not yet been launched. “Techmet, with our partners, is available to move forward with additional work if the American and Ukrainian governments asked us to do so,” Menell said in a statement.
During the first term of Mr. Trump, when the troops supported by the Kremlin were already part of the war in eastern Ukraine, kyiv obtained support, including for arms supplies, by buying Coal in an important swing state in Pennsylvania.
Part of the argument of Ukraine is now to emphasize that if it loses war, its mineral resources would fall into the hands of Russia and its allies like China, which already dominates the global market of these materials.
John E. Herbst, a former American ambassador to Ukraine and now principal director of the Eurasia Center for the Atlantic Council, said that Ukraine’s land was an obvious sale for Trump.
“This implies vast energy resources, economically precious assets that are not abundant in the Western world, and it is a way to strip other competitors, including China, their leverage in the United States” said Mr. Herbst. “It’s obvious.”
Last fall, work was in progress to finalize and sign an agreement with the Biden administration to cooperate on the extraction and treatment of minerals. But the Ukrainian authorities have decided to postpone the signing of the agreement and offer it to Mr. Trump instead so that he can claim the credit for this.
A Ukrainian delegation led by Yulia Svyrydenko, Minister of the Economy, then went to New York and Washington in December for meetings with American officials and commercial representatives, with critical minerals as a central subject.
Ms. Svyrydenko described potential energy agreements, including the acquisition of production licenses for critical minerals. A presentation, seen by the Times, stressed that Ukraine was “capable of building the entire value chain to meet metal demand in titanium and the EU for 25 years”.
Matthew Murray, Chairman of the Velta Advisory Council, a Ukrainian titanium extraction company, said that Svyryrydenko had asked her as well as other American commercial representatives in the case of Ukraine to the Trump administration .
“We spent a large part of this meeting to speak of critical raw materials,” said Murray. He added that the exploitation of these resources could become a new pillar of the American-Ukrainian relationship.
The form that this pillar can take is to be seen.
A project of the agreement that Kyiv postponed and which was examined by the Times included only commitments to share information and expertise on potential partnerships. It contained no financial commitment and was not binding. It is not clear if kyiv and Washington will modify the agreement to align it with Mr. Trump’s last proposals.
Mr. Murray, a former Obama administration official, said that an idea circulating in Washington was to offer Ukraine a loan to buy American weapons, with access to critical minerals as guaranteed. This proposal could align with the vision of Mr. Trump, who spoke of obtaining a “guarantee” of continuous American aid.
“There are still many measures to take, but the concept is very viable,” he said.
Marian Prysiazhniuk contributed the reports.
