Trump Wants Ukraine’s Metals. What It Would Cost to Mine Them.
President Donald Trump’s estimates of Ukraine’s strategic mineral wealth are probably much exaggerated. Way back on Feb. 3, when Washington and Kyiv were still allies, Trump told reporters that the U.S. could reap $500 billion from a half-share of Ukraine’s “rare earths and other things.”
That volume of mining would require massive, long-term greenfield investment that investors will hardly sink into a war-torn, energy-challenged nation with a hostile superpower breathing down its neck. Postwar Ukraine could meaningfully contribute to more-mature, but still critical, supply chains like uranium and titanium.
Trump’s interest in Ukraine’s subsoil is understandable. China’s strongest weapon in an escalating trade war is its near-monopoly on so-called rare-earth metals like terbium and dysprosium that are essential to modern electronics and weaponry alike.
Ukraine could in theory dent that dominance. It sits on 23 of the 50 minerals the U.S. government defines as essential, says Nataliya Katser-Buchkovska, founder of the Ukrainian Sustainable Investment Fund. It has a deep bench of experienced mining engineers, adds Ksenia Orynchak, CEO of the National Extractive Industries Association in Kyiv. And, of course, the European Union is next door.
Obstacles are formidable, however. A third of Ukraine’s mineral resources are in territory currently occupied by Russia, estimates Katser-Buchkovska.
Rare earths in raw form aren’t actually rare. “They are everywhere,” notes Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Exploration is under way in more stable jurisdictions from Brazil to Namibia.
Commercially viable rare-earth mining, not to mention processing, requires abundant cheap energy. It also requires a high tolerance for environmental damage: Every ton of rare earths minded produces 20,000 tons of toxic waste, according to the Harvard International Review. It takes lots of time, too: The average mining project of any kind globally takes 15 years to produce its first ore and pays back over at least 40 years, says Baskaran. “The private sector is not racing to make that kind of investment next door to [President Vladimir] Putin,” she says.
Ukraine won’t have to start from scratch everywhere, though. The country was a power in titanium before Russia’s February 2022 invasion. It provided most of the raw metal, or sponge, to Russian producer VSMPO-AVISMA, which in turn supplied 15% or so of the global market. Titanium’s combination of lightness and strength makes it essential for aerospace and power-generating turbines.
Postwar Ukraine could expand uranium mining, riding a global resurgence of nuclear power, predicts Koray Köse, founder of supply-chain consultant Köse Advisory. The currently dominant uranium source is Russian proto-satellite Kazakhstan, with nearly half of global production. Western customers would be happy to diversify, particularly France, which has up to 14 new nuclear reactors on the drawing board and just lost a reliable supplier thanks to a coup in its ex-colony Niger.
Ukraine’s biggest uranium deposits are mostly outside occupied territory, in Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad provinces, Köse adds.
Ukraine led the world in production of neon gas before the war. This element is used in excimer lasers that etch minute patterns onto semiconductors. It’s a byproduct of steel production, though, much of which has been either overrun or damaged by Russia. Ukraine’s steel output has fallen by two-thirds since the invasion.
It’s unlikely that critical-minerals mining will drive Ukraine’s eventual rebuilding and recovery, much less provide a “security shield,” as U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted in Kyiv on Feb. 12. But it might help around the edges.