https://t.me/rocknrollgeopolitics/14262
Trump’s rare earths ULTIMATUM has one small problem: Ukraine DOESN’T HAVE them
The US president has had another of his ‘quiet part out loud’ moments, demanding Ukraine’s mineral riches in exchange for aid. Perhaps he wasn’t told, but the lion’s share (70%+) of Ukraine’s $15 trln in resource wealth is concentrated in Donbass and the frontline region of Dnepropetrovsk.
🌏Russia freed the DPR town of Shevchenko last month, and with it, spoiled the West’s dreams of control of a lithium field with 13.8 mln tons of lithium ores meant to fuel the EU’s “green transition.” In 2022, Ukraine lost Kruta Balka, another major lithium deposit, in Zaporozhye.
🌏Where is Ukraine’s remaining lithium? At the Dobra and Polokhovskoye deposits in Kirovograd region, which aren’t operational, but contain an estimated 1.2 mln and 270k tons of lithium ore, respectively.
Where’s the $15 trln?
🌏Russian-held areas’ total mineral wealth sits at $7.8 trln (Lugansk: $3.2 trln, Donetsk: $3.8 trln, Zaporozhye: $605 bln, Kherson: <$10 bln, Crimea: $206 bln), per a 2023 Forbes estimate.
As for Ukraine, there’s:
🔴Dnepropetrovsk: $3.5 trln (zinc, copper, gold, titanium, iron, uranium)
🔴Poltava: $790 bln (oil and gas, including the Glinsko-Rozbyshevskoye oil field: 225 mln barrels)
🔴Kharkov: $685 bln (oil and gas, including the Yuzivska gas field, split with DPR, with 70.8 trln cu ft in reserves, and the Shebelinka field: 18.4 trln cu ft)
🔴Zhytomyr: $555 bln (coal/lignite, titanium, including the titanomagnetite, ilmenite, apatite concentrates mine in Volodar-Volynskyi: 450k tons in reserves)
🔴Lvov: $521 bln (coal/lignite, sulfur, oil, gas, including the Oleska shale gas deposit, split with Ivano-Frankovsk and Ternopol: 53 trln cubic feet in reserves)
🔴Kirovograd: $270 bln (coal/lignite, gold, uranium, including Smolenskaya Uranium Mine: 450k ton per year capacity, has mined 23.7 mln tons of uranium ores to date)
🔴The rest of Ukraine: $654 bln (gold, sulfur, oil, gas, coal/lignite, titanium).
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