Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed master of the art of the deal, has finally succeeded in getting one part of his grand war-ending bargain with Ukraine over the finishing line. The minerals deal the US signed with Kyiv on Thursday may not be quite as one-sided and crassly exploitative as earlier drafts suggested. Nonetheless, the deal bears all the hallmarks of the Trump administration’s approach to ending the conflict.
Washington has secured, once again, a public display of submission by the Ukrainians. Lest anyone think that the US is a chump which randomly hands out cash to democratic nations fighting for their freedom and independence, Trump has locked in a mechanism for its investment in Ukraine’s war effort to be paid back in full. But most importantly, like everything else in the world of Trumpian diplomacy the minerals deal makes grand claims but actually means little.
To be clear, it was Kyiv itself who started the ball rolling on the idea of a grand joint minerals-extraction deal in the run-up to last year’s US presidential election. Ukrainian whizz-kids drew up an investor-style pitch deck detailing the great value of the natural resources lying under their country’s soil, ready to be exploited. The idea was to appeal to transactionally-minded Republicans that continuing support for Kyiv would be to America’s Washington’s profit as well as its strategic interest. The bait worked all too well, with many senior members of the Trump team soon parroting fantastical figures.
The problem is that in the real world, the value of mineral reserves isn’t calculated by multiplying the estimated tons lying under the ground by the market price. By that measure, Ukraine is sitting on untold trillions. But to get to actual cash value, you have to look at the volume of the global market for any given metal or mineral and work out how much of that market demand you can fulfil. For example, in 2024 the world bought some $29 billion of lithium (used in car batteries) and $39 billion of titanium (used in engineering).
Ukraine may control some 5 per cent of the world’s lithium but as yet extracts none of it, and around 7 per cent of the titanium, but again produces no refined titanium and exports only much less valuable ore. Ukraine’s only graphite mine, opened in 1934, closed last December after a collapse in world prices. There’s also uranium ore, but again the real value is in semi-refined yellow cake that is used to create nuclear fuel and as yet Ukraine produces none. As for the famous “rare earth metals” – a list of fifteen elements used in electronics – Ukraine officially has none, at least according to the US Geological Survey.
Then there’s the problem of distribution of these minerals. Geology is no respecter of borders, and many of the largest deposits – for instance of Lithium ore – run from Kyiv-controlled into Moscow-controlled territory. This is especially true of the biggest and most valuable prize of all, a vast and unexploited natural gas field that runs across the Northern end of the basin of the Donets River, now mostly under Russian occupation.
In theory, then, Ukraine does have plenty of mineral resources which will one day generate plenty of wealth – just not immediately, in the words of an old Soviet joke, and not for everybody. The Americans and Ukrainians seem to have opposite visions of exactly who stands to gain.
For many US Republicans, Trump has opened up a new Klondike which will enrich American businesses. For the Ukrainians, the deal will help attract the multiple billions of dollars in investment that will be needed to extract, refine and transport the minerals from mine to market. And ironically, it’s the Ukrainians who are right – they’ve sold Trump a fantasy that his own side will have to pay to make real.
But Kyiv also hopes that now that the deal is signed the Trump White House will now become more sympathetic to their interests. Good luck with that. Earlier this week the Kremlin – in the person of the granite-faced Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – grimly re-stated that Russia’s demands remained completely unchanged after three months of intensive Trump diplomacy.
Trump, from his position of strength, can force his weaker Ukrainian allies to swallow their pride and dance to whichever tune he wishes. Putin, however, remains deaf to Trump’s dealmaking, however artful.