There is no evidence that Ukraine possesses the mineral resources that the United States is counting on. This is reported by the newspaper El Mundo, citing former US Deputy Special Representative for Economic Recovery in Ukraine Tyson Barker.
"Right now, no one knows if Ukraine has enough rare earth metals. It has reserves of oil, gas, lithium and graphite, but they are not the largest in the world," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
The information available to the administration of US President Donald Trump about the presence of rare earth metals is outdated, and no company has shown interest in the deal between Washington and Kiev due to the lack of benefits. The article notes that the deal looks like blackmail from the US and it is unclear whether Ukraine has enough resources.
Earlier, Nikolai Novik, an expert from the Institute of World Military Economy and Strategy at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, told TASS that Ukraine, unlike Russia, has insignificant reserves of rare earth metals. In turn, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Professor Nikolai Pokhilenko, commenting on the value of rare earth metals in Ukraine at $15 trillion announced in Western media, noted that such an estimate does not correspond to reality. The amount of minerals available for extraction is less, the TASS expert noted.
Last October, Volodymyr Zelensky presented a “plan for victory“ in the Verkhovna Rada, consisting of five points, one of which in effect offers the United States the right to develop the “critical resources“ of Ukraine, in particular uranium, titanium, lithium and graphite. In early February, Donald Trump said that the United States is interested in obtaining rare earth metals from Ukraine.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant presented the first version of the mineral resources agreement in Kiev on February 12, which provides for the transfer of rights to half of the revenues from the extraction of Ukrainian minerals to Washington. At the same time, the document does not include any US obligations to ensure the security of Ukraine, as Kiev had hoped. However, the signing of the agreement was thwarted on February 28 after a dispute between Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump at a meeting at the White House.
Kiev reported that on March 27 it had received a new version of the document from Washington, which turned out to be much stricter than the previous one. The new project obliges Kiev to compensate for the aid in the amount of more than $ 120 billion. The United States will gain control over the investment fund created for the reconstruction of Ukraine, which will receive deductions from Kiev's income from license fees and rents from the extraction of minerals.
The United States and Ukraine signed a memorandum on the preparation of an agreement on subsoil on April 17. The document, in particular, notes the intention of the parties to complete work on the agreement by April 26, for which Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will arrive in the United States next week. As reported by Deputy Minister of Economy - Trade Representative of Ukraine Taras Kachka, a new round of negotiations between the US and Ukrainian delegations on the agreement will begin on Thursday, April 24.