Ukraine’s mineral wealth has been a key factor in its negotiations with the U.S. as the 2 nations work out particulars for a ceasefire settlement in Ukraine’s struggle with Russia.
After a rocky start to those negotiations, officers from the U.S. and Ukraine announced an agreement on March 11, 2025. The U.S. agreed to renew help and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, with some conditions, and each agreed to work towards “a complete settlement for growing Ukraine’s important mineral sources to increase Ukraine’s financial system and assure Ukraine’s long-term prosperity and safety.”
The preliminary announcement from Ukraine’s authorities included that important minerals would additionally “offset the price of American help,” however that line was faraway from the joint announcement. Getting Russia to comply with a ceasefire could be the following step.
There’s little doubt that Ukraine has an abundance of important minerals, or that these sources will probably be important to its postwar reconstruction. However what precisely do these sources embody, and the way ample and accessible are they?
The struggle has severely restricted entry to knowledge about Ukraine’s pure sources. Nevertheless, as a geoscientist with expertise in useful resource analysis, I’ve been studying technical stories, a lot of them behind paywalls, to grasp what’s at stake. Right here’s what we all know.
Ukraine’s minerals gasoline industries and militaries
Ukraine’s mineral sources are concentrated in two geologic provinces. The bigger of those, referred to as the Ukrainian Protect, is a large belt operating by the middle of the nation, from the northwest to the southeast. It consists of very outdated, metamorphic and granitic rocks.
A multibillion-year historical past of fault motion and volcanic exercise created a variety of minerals concentrated in native websites and throughout some bigger areas.
A second province, near Ukraine’s border with Russia within the east, features a rift basin referred to as the Dnipro-Donets Melancholy. It’s crammed with sedimentary rocks containing coal, oil and pure gasoline.
Ukrainian Geological Survey
Earlier than Ukraine’s independence in 1991, each areas provided the Soviet Union with supplies for its industrialization and army. An enormous industrial space centered on steelmaking grew within the southeast, the place iron, manganese and coal are particularly plentiful.
By the 2000s, Ukraine was a significant producer and exporter of those and different minerals. It additionally mines uranium, used for nuclear energy.
As well as, Soviet and Ukrainian geoscientists recognized deposits of lithium and rare earth metals that stay undeveloped.
Nevertheless, technical stories counsel that assessments of those and another important minerals are primarily based on outdated geologic data, that a significant number of mines are inactive as a result of struggle, and that many make use of older, inefficient technology.
That means important mineral manufacturing might be elevated by peacetime international funding, and that these minerals may present even larger worth than they do as we speak to whomever controls them.
Why the US is so
Essential minerals are defined as sources which are important to financial or nationwide safety and topic to provide dangers. They embody minerals utilized in army gear, computer systems, batteries and plenty of different merchandise.
A list of 50 critical minerals, created by the U.S. Geological Survey, reveals that greater than a dozen relied upon by the U.S. are ample in Ukraine.
A majority of these are within the Ukrainian Protect, and roughly 20% of Ukraine’s whole doable reserves are in areas at present occupied by Russia’s army forces.
Arsen Dzodzaiev/Anadolu via Getty Images
Essential minerals Ukraine at present mines
Three important minerals particularly ample in Ukraine are manganese, titanium and graphite. Between 80% and 100% of U.S. demand for every of those at present comes from foreign imports..
Manganese is a vital ingredient in steelmaking and batteries. Ukraine is estimated to have the most important whole reserves on this planet at 2.4 billion tons. Nevertheless, the deposits are of pretty low grade – solely about 11% to 35% of the rock mined is manganese. So it tends to require lots of materials and costly processing, including to the full price.
That is additionally true for graphite, utilized in battery electrodes and a variety of industrial applications. Graphite happens in ore our bodies situated within the south-central and northwestern portion of the Ukrainian Protect. No less than six deposits have been recognized there, with an estimated whole of 343 million tons of ore– 18.6 million tons of precise graphite. It’s the most important supply in Europe and the fifth largest globally.
Titanium, a key steel for aerospace, ship and missile know-how, is current in as many as 28 areas in Ukraine, each in exhausting rock and sand or gravel deposits. The dimensions of the full reserve is confidential, however estimates are commonly in the hundreds of millions of tons.
Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images
Plenty of different important minerals which are utilized in semiconductor and battery applied sciences are much less plentiful in Ukraine but in addition priceless. Zinc happens in deposits with different metals akin to lead, gold, silver and copper. Gallium and germanium are byproducts of different ores – zinc for gallium, lignite coal for germanium. Nickel and cobalt might be present in ultramafic rock, with nickel extra ample.
No figures for Ukraine’s reserves of those parts had been accessible in early 2025, except for zinc, whose reserves have been estimated at round 6.1 million tons, placing Ukraine among the many high 10 nations for zinc.
Essential minerals that aren’t being mined – but
Geologists have recognized doubtlessly vital volumes in Ukraine of three different forms of important minerals vital for power, army and different makes use of: lithium, uncommon earth metals and scandium.
None of those had been mined there as of early 2025, although a lithium deposit had been licensed for business extraction.
The most important potential lithium reserves exist at three websites within the south-central and southeastern Ukrainian Protect, the place the grade of ore is taken into account average to good. How a lot lithium these reserves maintain stays confidential, however technical stories counsel it’s on the order of 160 million tons of ore and 1.6 million to three million tons of lithium oxide. If most of this might be recovered in a worthwhile method, it might place Ukraine among the many high 5 nations for lithium.
Smaller volumes of tantalum and niobium, additionally utilized in metal alloys and know-how, have additionally been recognized in these reserves. Most of Ukraine’s lithium happens as petalite, which, not like the opposite primary lithium mineral, spodumene, requires dearer processing.
Uncommon earth parts in Ukraine are identified to exist in several sites of volcanic origin and in affiliation with uranium within the south-central portion of the Ukrainian Protect. These haven’t been developed, although sampling has indicated business potential in some websites, whereas different websites seem much less viable.
Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
Uncommon earth parts in excessive demand for superior magnets and electronics – neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium – are all current in various quantities in these areas. Different important minerals are related to these deposits, particularly zirconium, tantalum and niobium, in undetermined however doubtlessly vital quantities.
Lastly, scandium, utilized in aluminum alloys for aerospace elements, has been recognized as a byproduct of processing titanium ores. Ukraine’s scandium doesn’t seem to have been studied in sufficient element to guage its business potential. Nevertheless, world manufacturing, about 30 to 40 tons per yr, is forecast to grow rapidly.
Ukraine’s mineral future
It’s clear that Ukraine is endowed with priceless sources. Nevertheless, extracting them would require roads and railways for entry, infrastructure akin to electrical energy and mining and processing know-how, funding, technical experience, environmental concerns and, above all, cessation of army battle.
These are the true determinants of Ukraine’s mining future.
This text, initially revealed March 11, 2025, has been up to date with the introduced settlement.
