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Trump Wants Ukraine Minerals: US President Donald Trump has accused Ukraine of “breaking” a deal over the use of its mineral resources. While the deal had never been signed, Trump on Wednesday (February 19) told reporters, “They broke that deal.”
He claimed that when US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent travelled to Kyiv last week, the Ukrainians “agreed to it more or less” but then Bessent “was treated rather rudely because essentially they told him no.”
The US has proposed that it be allowed access to 50 per cent of Ukraine’s important mineral resources in return for support against Russia. While Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is open to the deal, he wants more favourable terms.
What are critical minerals, and how much of these does Ukraine possess? Why does the US want them? How much can one country be allowed to use another’s natural resources? We explain.
Ukraine has rich resources of minerals that are critical in manufacturing a variety of products, from high-end weapon systems to clean energy solutions like Electrical Vehicles to electronic gadgets and semiconductors. These minerals are not found widely and are also difficult to extract, making them valuable. What makes them even more important for the US and the West is that China has large sources of them. Mineral resources are part of the reason Trump wants to buy Greenland, too.
Two classifications are important when talking about these resources — rare earth elements, and critical minerals.
There are 17 rare earth elements, including 15 Lanthanides (atomic numbers 57 — which is Lanthanum — to 71 in the periodic table), Scandium (atomic number 21) and Yttrium (39).
Minerals are defined as ‘critical’ by countries based on their needs, broadly using two parameters: their importance for economic development and national security, and their lack of availability. India in 2023 identified 30 critical minerals.
According to a report by Ukraine’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources and the Ukrainian Geological Survey, “Ukraine holds 22 of the 50 strategic materials identified by the US as critical, and 25 out of the 34 recognised by the EU as critically important. Particularly, Ukraine holds very competitive positions in five key ones: graphite, lithium, titanium, beryllium and uranium.”
What has the US proposed?
While the details of the deal are not in public domain, broadly, while Ukraine sees the deal as a means to secure future assistance, Trump wants payment for the help the US has already provided.
According to a Financial Times report, Trump has said the US is owed $500 billion worth of Ukraine’s resources (including mineral deposits, fuel, and infrastructure such as ports) in exchange for military assistance provided against Russia. “That is significantly more than the total $69.2bn in military assistance Washington has given since 2014, according to State Department statistics,” the report says.
The deal was discussed on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference last week, after which Zelenskyy told news agency AP, “I didn’t let the ministers sign a relevant agreement because in my view it is not ready to protect us, our interest.”
American officials have said that if the US were to get economic stakes in Ukraine — like a mining licence or other arrangements to extract minerals — that in itself would be a security guarantee, as the US would defend its interests against an attack. However, Zelenskyy wants a more concrete assurance of military and economic aid.
Can the US use up to 50% of another country’s resources?
It might not be that simple. Trump is likely to run into four major problems.
First, any deal will have to be in accordance with Ukraine’s laws, and as Kseniiia Orynchak, founder of the National Association of Mining Industry of Ukraine, told AP, “Subsoil belongs to Ukrainians under the constitution.”
Second, there is very little clarity on the exact quantity and quality of the mineral resources. They remain underexplored and little extraction is happening right now. The FT report quoted Gracelin Baskaran, a director at the US Center for Strategic and International Studies, as saying, “The data is not modern, we have very little information about what’s there.” In fact, many of the geological surveys were done by Russia’s predecessor state, the Soviet Union, when Ukraine was a part of it pre-1991.
Third, Ukraine already has a deal to extract these resources with the European Union. A ‘strategic partnership on raw materials’ was signed between the EU and Ukraine in July 2021, months before Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022.
Fourth, a significant portion of these minerals are in areas under Russian occupation currently. According to a Reuters report, “Russian forces, which have already seized a fifth of Ukraine including reserves of rare earths, are now little more than 4 miles from the Shevchenko lithium deposit.”
