Ukraine’s mineral wealth has been a key think about its negotiations with the U.S. as the 2 international locations work out particulars for a ceasefire settlement in Ukraine’s warfare with Russia.
After a rocky begin to these negotiations, officers from the U.S. and Ukraine introduced an settlement on March 11, 2025. The U.S. would resume help and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, with some situations, and each agreed to work towards “a comprehensive agreement for developing Ukraine’s critical mineral resources to expand Ukraine’s economy and guarantee Ukraine’s long-term prosperity and security.”
The preliminary announcement from Ukraine’s authorities acknowledged that crucial minerals would additionally “offset the cost of American assistance,” however that line was faraway from the joint assertion. Getting Russia to conform to a ceasefire can be the subsequent step.
There’s little doubt that Ukraine has an abundance of crucial minerals, or that these sources will probably be important to its postwar reconstruction. However what precisely do these sources embrace, and the way ample and accessible are they?
The warfare 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, often called the Ukrainian Defend, is a large belt operating by way of 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 It consists of very outdated, metamorphic and granitic rocks.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 range 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 often called the Dnipro-Donets Despair. It’s crammed with sedimentary rocks containing coal, oil and pure fuel.
Ukraine’s crucial mineral sources.
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 major 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 uncommon earth metals that stay undeveloped.
Nevertheless, technical stories recommend that assessments of those and another crucial minerals are primarily based on outdated geologic knowledge, {that a} important variety of mines are inactive as a result of warfare, and that many make use of older, inefficient know-how.
That implies crucial mineral manufacturing could possibly be elevated by peacetime international funding, and that these minerals may present even better worth than they do at present to whomever controls them.
Why the US is so
Vital minerals are outlined as sources which are important to financial or nationwide safety and topic to produce dangers. They embrace minerals utilized in army tools, computer systems, batteries and plenty of different merchandise.
An inventory of fifty crucial 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 Defend, and roughly 20% of Ukraine’s whole doable reserves are in areas at the moment occupied by Russia’s army forces.
Graphite is mined from a quarry that’s about 120 meters deep in Zavallya, Ukraine.
Arsen Dzodzaiev/Anadolu through Getty Photos
Vital minerals Ukraine at the moment mines
Three crucial minerals particularly ample in Ukraine are manganese, titanium and graphite. Between 80% and 100% of U.S. demand for every of those at the moment comes from international imports..
Manganese is a necessary aspect in steelmaking and batteries. Ukraine is estimated to have the most important whole reserves on the 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 a whole lot of materials and costly processing, including to the overall value.
That is additionally true for graphite, utilized in battery electrodes and a wide range of industrial purposes. Graphite happens in ore our bodies positioned within the south-central and northwestern portion of the Ukrainian Defend. Not 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 arduous rock and sand or gravel deposits. The dimensions of the overall reserve is confidential, however estimates are generally within the tons of of thousands and thousands of tons.
Employees function equipment at an open-pit titanium mine within the Zhytomyr area on Feb. 28, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Roman Pilipey/AFP through Getty Photos
Plenty of different crucial minerals which are utilized in semiconductor and battery applied sciences are much less plentiful in Ukraine but in addition worthwhile. Zinc happens in deposits with different metals comparable 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 components have been obtainable 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.
Vital minerals that aren’t being mined – but
Geologists have recognized probably important volumes in Ukraine of three different kinds of crucial 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 industrial extraction.
The most important potential lithium reserves exist at three websites within the south-central and southeastern Ukrainian Defend, the place the grade of ore is taken into account reasonable to good. How a lot lithium these reserves maintain stays confidential, however technical stories recommend 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 could possibly 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 fundamental lithium mineral, spodumene, requires costlier processing.
Uncommon earth components in Ukraine are identified to exist in a number of websites of volcanic origin and in affiliation with uranium within the south-central portion of the Ukrainian Defend. These haven’t been developed, although sampling has indicated industrial potential in some websites, whereas different websites seem much less viable.
Regardless of the continued warfare, many mining firms throughout the nation have continued their operations, extracting sources comparable to titanium, graphite and beryllium.
Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Photos
Uncommon earth components in excessive demand for superior magnets and electronics – neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium – are all current in various quantities in these areas. Different crucial minerals are related to these deposits, particularly zirconium, tantalum and niobium, in undetermined however probably important 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 judge its industrial potential. Nevertheless, world manufacturing, about 30 to 40 tons per yr, is forecast to develop quickly.
Ukraine’s mineral future
It’s clear that Ukraine is endowed with worthwhile sources. Nevertheless, extracting them would require roads and railways for entry, infrastructure comparable to electrical energy and mining and processing know-how, funding, technical experience, environmental issues and, above all, cessation of army battle.
These are the true determinants of Ukraine’s mining future.
This text, initially printed March 11, 2025, has been up to date with the introduced settlement.
