Top Mineral deal with Ukraine to use the huge amounts of important minerals that are found in that European country is very different from most things that have happened during Donald Trump’s second term. For starters, it’s not a normal form of war reparations:

Washington didn’t directly take part in the fight; it only helped Kyiv defend itself against Russia’s aggression by giving it money and troops.

Second, there are big questions about Ukraine’s rare earths prospects, even though the country has a lot of valuable minerals, some of which are important for an energy transition that Trump doesn’t support. Trump has been concentrating on this area for several months now.

Official data says that Ukraine has large amounts of 22 of the 34 elements that the EU calls “critical raw materials” because they are used in many cutting-edge businesses.

The UN said that Ukraine is home to about 5% of all the important resources in the Earth’s crust at the beginning of 2022, not long before Russia invaded Ukraine. There was only one year ago, in July 2021, when the EU signed a strategic deal that allowed them to work together on future projects. A note that wasn’t finished after Vladimir Putin’s attack.

Numbers given by Kyiv are similar to those given by the UN. Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Svetlana Grinchuk said, “Ukraine only takes up 0.4% of the Earth’s surface, but it has about 5% of all important raw materials.”

Some examples include lithium, which is an important part of making batteries, but most of it is in two border regions: Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia. It also has a fifth of the world’s graphite deposits, which are just as important for making electric cars. It also has some titanium and uranium, though not as much as the world’s biggest producers of those elements.

So far, this is true and can be checked. Things get tricky when you look at the specifics. Trump has been pushing for weeks to get access to the rare earths in Ukraine, which he says the deal will allow him to do.

The U.S. president has said that there are only a few of these 17 chemical elements in the earth’s surface, but they are very important for many areas. There are a few that have become more important recently: security and renewable energy.

Gracelin Baskaran, who is in charge of the key minerals program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and Meredith Schwartz, who is an associate researcher at the U.S. think tank, don’t think that Ukraine has as much power as the White House wants it to have.

There is not a lot of information available on whether or not it is profitable to mine Ukraine’s rare earth elements and other strategic materials.” All the estimates are based on mapping that was made 30–60 years ago by the Soviet Union using old exploration methods, they write in an analysis that was just released.

Roman Opimakh, who used to be the director general of the Ukrainian Geological Survey, agreed with the evidence. “Unfortunately, there is no modern assessment [of reserves],” he told S&P Global, a company that does financial research.

As an independent expert with more than 40 years of experience in geology, Tony Mariano went even further: “As far as I know, there are no rare earth deposits in Ukraine that can be used to make money.” I looked at clay layers that I thought might be useful, but they are not useful at all. There are still possibilities, but we need to look into them more and make a decision.

The U.S. government, through the U.S. Geological Service, does not include Ukraine in its list of countries that have large amounts of rare earths. This list is dominated by China, which has nearly 40% of all known reserves, making it the most powerful country in the world. With almost 20% each, Vietnam and Brazil come next.

Aside from the fact that there are a lot of them, the second thing that worries people is their ability to use these resources. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that Ukraine’s ability to make power has dropped to a third of what it was before the war, making mining one of the energy-intensive industries in the world.

This is a big problem for the country. Baskaran and Schwartz say, “So before we can start to explore and extract minerals, we will need to make big changes to our energy infrastructure.

The third thing they talk about is how mining companies probably won’t want to put a lot of money into a country where security risks are still high and are likely to stay high. Mining is an investment that lasts a long time and costs a lot of money.”

It takes about 18 years to create a mine around the world, and it costs between $500 million and $1 billion to build a mine and a separation plant. Given the size and length of the investment, trust in the political and economic security of a country is very important.

Even if Trump, Putin, and Zelenskiy reach a peace deal, there will still be a chance of more fighting and land taking because the war has been going on for a long time.

Long way from $500 billion

“Ukraine has a lot of different mineral deposits, but not many rare earth sites that can be used and expanded.” We know that much, says Ellie Saklatvala, a senior metals expert at the British commodities firm Argus.

Deposits in Ukraine have not been studied in depth, in part because the mining industry has put more emphasis on others that are available right away and make money, like iron ore, coal, and titanium.” Trump put a magic number of $500 billion on the table, and she says, “So it’s possible that more will come to light, but not value $500 billion.

What else could it mean? No one moved in Ukraine from late 2020 to early 2022, when the price of rare earths went through the roof and everyone rushed to find new sources.

“It’s one thing to have rare earths in the ground; it’s quite another to have a deposit that can be used for business,” says Saklatvala.

Also, Javier Blas’s calculations are very clear: “Let’s suppose that Ukraine were able, as if by magic, to produce 20% of the world’s rare earths.”

Blas is a top analytical expert in the field of raw materials. It would be the same as $3 billion a year. To get the $500 billion that Trump wants, the US would have to guarantee production in Ukraine for more than 150 years. “Not true.”