In a leaked draft, the British newspaper previously reported on, US President Donald Trump is claiming large shares of Ukrainian raw materials, assets, and infrastructure, in exchange for continued assistance in the war against Russia.
The demands appear to be based on a proposal presented by Trump's Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky during a visit to New York in September, but are much more far-reaching. Trump himself has stated that the US is after rare earth metals, which are necessary for all modern technology. For example, it is claimed that 400 kilograms of these substances are required to build a single F-35 advanced fighter jet.
The fertile Ukrainian soil is rich in minerals. Estimates of the value are uncertain and vary widely, but in several cases exceed ten billion dollars, potentially hundreds of thousands of billions of kronor.
Larger Game Plan
However, experts spoken to by the Telegraph reason that Ukraine is only one piece on a much larger game board – where the US's superpower rival China currently controls crucial supply chains for all modern products we are becoming increasingly dependent on.
Like the EU, the US and other geopolitical actors are looking for critical minerals that bypass China, and are betting on agreements that secure future deliveries, says Bryan Bille, who works at Benchmark Minerals in London.
This is about finding new raw materials to break China's dominance, which is a very big challenge.
The reasoning is not new. The EU already agreed on the CRM (Critical Raw Materials Act) in 2020, a kind of action plan for risk diversification in raw material supply. The following year, a cooperation agreement was signed with Ukraine on the matter – but since much of the country's largest and best finds are located in the heavily war-torn eastern regions, little has happened since then.
Gangster in Business
But Trump does not seem interested in any vague cooperation agreement, instead demanding rights to large shares of Ukraine's wealth for an indefinite period.
He's behaving like a small-time gangster who walks into a business and says: nice little place you've got, it would be a shame if something happened to it... says Ian Bond at the think tank CER (Centre for European Reform) to the Telegraph.
The US administration is acting like a mafia organization.
Henrik Samuelsson/TT
Facts: Coveted Raw Materials in Ukraine
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In Ukraine, there are deposits of a long list of coveted substances, such as neodymium, erbium, lanthanum, and yttrium.
Europe has relatively little of the lithium needed for batteries, but Ukraine has about a third of the occurrence in our part of the world.
Another example is graphite, which is currently refined by 90 percent in China. Ukraine is among the five countries in the world with the most graphite.
Ukraine's mineral resources have been valued at hundreds of thousands of billions of kronor. However, all figures should be interpreted with great caution, as prices vary greatly – for example, the price of lithium has plummeted by 90 percent as extraction has been scaled up worldwide in recent years.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
