Trump has pushed for a deal on Ukraine’s $500 billion in rare earth minerals, but some say the estimated value is based on old data and exaggerated.
Kyiv and the United States are in the final stages of negotiating a minerals deal, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna said on Monday.
The deal is seen as key to ending the three-year Russia–Ukraine conflict, with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy having previously stressed that any such deal must involve concrete security guarantees.
“Ukrainian and U.S. teams are in the final stages of negotiations regarding the minerals agreement. The negotiations have been very constructive, with nearly all key details finalized,” Stefanishyna wrote in a Feb. 24. post on social media platform X. “We hope both US and UA leaders might sign and endorse it in Washington (at) the soonest to showcase our commitment for decades to come.”
Last month, President Donald Trump said that Ukraine had “essentially agreed” to give the U.S. access to $500 billion worth of deposits of rare earths and critical minerals.
He said the United States is owed “more than $300 billion, probably $350 [billion]” for its support to Ukraine and that Europe is “in for probably $100 billion.”
“I told [Ukraine] that I want the equivalent of like $500 billion worth of rare earth [minerals], and they’ve essentially agreed to do that,” Trump said.
Related Stories
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine has Europe’s largest reserves of titanium, used in aerospace, automotive, and medical industries, as well as uranium, the primary fuel source for nuclear power reactors and weapon production.
Many of the titanium deposits were marked in northwestern Ukraine, far from the fighting, he said.
He claimed that Russia knew in detail where Ukraine’s critical resources were from Soviet-era geological surveys.
He also said that Kyiv and the White House were discussing the idea of using Ukraine’s large underground gas storage sites to store U.S. liquefied natural gas.
‘Breathless Fantasy’
Ukraine’s rare earths and minerals may not be that easy to extract.
According to a Feb. 13 report by rating agency S&P’s global commodity insights team, Ukraine is “relying on a Soviet-era assessment of difficult-to-access rare earths deposits.”
“Some are stuck behind battle lines or, in the case of the geological record for one of the sites, require advanced processing technology and a stable energy grid to extract,” the report said, adding that the valuation of the deposits is based on “decades-old data.”
“No sources contacted by Commodity Insights were aware of any commercial exploration or assessment of those deposits in the post-Soviet period.”
Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, told S&P that he was “not aware of any significant rare earth assets or reserves in Ukraine.”
“This is just another breathless fantasy that we will magically solve our critical mineral constraints through a country at war,“ he said. “The closest analogy for me is the very similar hyperbole about the trillions of dollars of minerals sitting under Afghanistan.“
Dispute
Zelenskyy initially rejected a U.S. proposal focused on mineral cooperation, calling it “not a serious conversation” and saying that it did not serve Ukraine’s interests.
He dismissed U.S. demands for $500 billion worth of mineral wealth in repayment for wartime aid, saying that Washington had not provided that amount. He also criticized the proposal for lacking security guarantees, which Ukraine considers essential in any long-term peace settlement with Russia—a deal that Trump has promised to broker.
Trump branded Zelenskyy “a dictator without elections” on Feb. 19, referencing the Ukrainian leader’s decision to remain in office after his term expired without calling a wartime vote.
“Today, the teams of Ukraine and the United States are working on a draft agreement between our governments,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “This agreement has the potential to strengthen our relations and, most importantly, the details must be arranged in such a way that ensures it works. I am hoping for a result, a fair result.”
Tom Ozimek and Reuters contributed to this report.
