• United States
• Ukraine
• Christina Lu

February 12, 2025, 4:51 PM View Comments ()

Washington and Kyiv appear to be inching closer to a potential rare-earth deal that could see the countries exchange Ukraine’s mineral resources for continued U.S. aid, even as industry experts warn that immense barriers stand in the way. 

Rare earths—a set of 17 metallic elements that are not actually that rare, despite their name—are important to U.S. policymakers because they underpin technology from guided missiles to wind turbines. But China overwhelmingly commands their global supply chains, making control of the resources a strategic vulnerability that Washington has for years been desperate to plug. 

Both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump have seemed excited about the prospect of a deal, with the U.S. leader declaring that he wants “the equivalent of, like, $500 billion worth of rare earths.” Talks appeared to advance on Wednesday as U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Zelensky in Kyiv—making him the first official in Trump’s cabinet to travel to the country. 

Afterward, Bessent said a minerals agreement was part of a “larger peace deal that Trump has in mind” and would “provide a long-term security shield” for Ukraine. Zelensky said the Trump administration had presented a first draft agreement, which Kyiv would assess, and that he hoped to finalize a deal at the upcoming Munich Security Conference. 

Even if Kyiv and Washington do strike a deal, big challenges lie ahead. 

While Ukraine is home to considerable rare earths and minerals such as uranium and titanium, it does not currently produce rare earths, nor has it produced rare earths in recent decades, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Geological data and information is scant, per Reuters, and We Build Ukraine, a Kyiv-based think tank, estimates that Russia’s occupation has rendered 40 percent of Ukraine’s metallic mineral riches inaccessible. Zelensky has said under 20 percent of the country’s mineral resources are under Russian occupation. 

“Trump may have better relations with Russia, but you can’t develop a mine from scratch and extract resources in three or four years,” said Gracelin Baskaran, a critical minerals security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who noted that on average globally, it takes 15 years to develop a mine. “It’s a decades-long undertaking.”

And getting the resources out of the ground is just one part of the problem. Engineering new mineral supply chains requires an entire ecosystem of processing, refining, and manufacturing systems, all of which take time and investment to build. With the Russia-Ukraine war, there is not a lot of private sector appetite to work in Ukraine, Baskaran said. 

“I think it’s a smart move from Zelensky as a way to convince the new administration,” said Bryan Bille, a policy expert at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “But in the end, it’s a question about developing these deposits, bringing these projects online, which could take years.”