BREAKING NEWS: How the Ukraine War Could End With a Minerals Deal That’s Good For Everyone

 

The war in Ukraine finally may be headed for a turning point. After all-day negotiations between the U.S. and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that Ukraine had accepted a 30-day ceasefire proposal and “is ready to start talking and stop shooting.” As for Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor three years ago, Rubio added, “The ball is now in their court.”

The Trump administration announced it resumed intelligence sharing and would restart security assistance to Ukraine. According to a joint statement, U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to “to conclude as soon as possible a comprehensive agreement for developing Ukraine’s critical mineral resources to expand Ukraine’s economy and guarantee Ukraine’s long-term prosperity and security.”

How to leverage Ukraine’s mineral wealth – not only to finance its reconstruction and boost its economy, but also to repay the U.S. for billions of dollars in military and humanitarian support – has become a major issue in negotiations to support Ukraine since Trump returned to office.

The war has severely limited access to reliable data about Ukraine’s natural resources, but as a geoscientist with experience in resource evaluation, I have been studying technical reports to better understand what’s at stake.

Ukraine’s minerals fuel industries and militaries

A multibillion-year history of fault movement and volcanic activity in Ukraine created a diversity of mineral resources concentrated in two geologic provinces. The larger one, known as the Ukrainian Shield, is a wide belt of metamorphic and granitic rock running through the center of the country, from the northwest to the southeast.

A second one, close to Ukraine’s border with Russia in the east, includes a rift basin called the Dnipro-Donets Depression, which is filled with sedimentary rocks containing coal, oil and natural gas.

UKRAINIAN GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Before Ukraine got its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, these areas supplied materials for Soviet industrialization and military use. There’s a massive industrial area centered on steelmaking in the southeast, where iron, manganese and coal are plentiful. By the 2000s, Ukraine was a significant producer and exporter of these and other minerals. It also mines uranium, used for nuclear power.

Soviet and Ukrainian geoscientists identified deposits of lithium and rare-earth metals that are as yet undeveloped. But my reading of technical reports indicates that much geologic data is outdated, many mines are inactive due to the war and many others rely on old and inefficient technology.

That means peacetime foreign investment could dramatically boost Ukraine’s critical minerals industry – a compelling reason, aside from humanitarian concerns, to end the war swiftly and begin reconstruction.

Why the U.S. is so interested

Critical minerals are those that are essential to a nation’s economic or national security but vulnerable to supply risks. That includes minerals used in military equipment, computers, batteries and other products.

The U.S. is reliant on more than a dozen critical minerals that are abundant in Ukraine. Trump and Rubio have both said that Ukraine must be ready to cede some territory to Russia in order to achieve a peace deal. But before the U.S. brokers any land giveaway deal to end the war, it should keep in mind that roughly 20% of Ukraine’s total possible minerals reserves are in parts of the country currently occupied by Russia’s military forces.

Critical minerals Ukraine currently mines

Three critical minerals especially abundant in Ukraine are manganese, titanium and graphite. The U.S. is almost entirely reliant on foreign imports of these minerals, which may be one reason for Trump’s keen interest in Ukraine’s resources.

Manganese is essential to steelmaking and batteries, and Ukraine is estimated to have the largest total manganese reserves in the world, at 2.4 billion tons.

That’s also true for graphite, used in battery electrodes and a variety of industrial applications. At least six deposits have been identified in Ukraine, the largest source in Europe and the fifth largest globally.

Titanium, a key metal for aerospace, ship and missile technology, exists in as many as 28 locations in Ukraine. The size of the reserve is confidential, but estimates are in the hundreds of millions of tons.

A number of other critical minerals that are used in semiconductor and battery technologies are less plentiful but also valuable. Ukraine is estimated to be among the top 10 nations in zinc reserves.

Critical minerals that aren’t being mined – yet

Geologists have identified potentially significant volumes of three other critical minerals important for energy, military and other uses: lithium, rare-earth metals and scandium.

Ukraine could be among the top five nations for lithium. None had been mined there as of early 2025, though a lithium deposit has been licensed for commercial extraction. Rare-earth elements that are in high demand for superior magnets and electronics – neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium – are all present in varying amounts in Ukraine.

Finally, scandium, used in aluminum alloys for aerospace components, has been identified as a byproduct of processing titanium ores.

Extracting Ukraine’s valuable minerals will require significant investment in building roads and railways and supplying electricity for mining and processing technology, as well as technical and environmental expertise.

There are many who want to profit from Ukraine’s resources, starting with the government in Kyiv, its backers in Washington and its enemies in Moscow.

None of that lucrative mineral exploitation can begin until fighting stops. On top of the human suffering, the staggering costs and the other critical reasons to end the war, Ukraine’s mineral future is one more reason to end the war as soon as possible.