Eurasia Press & News
In his sudden haste to see Ukraine repay the US for the billions of dollars appropriated by Congress to the country in its war against Russian aggression, Donald Trump, aka “Mr. Art of the Deal,” has deployed his tactless “Trumplomacy” with its attendant extortive strongarm tactics to gain access to critical minerals that Ukraine has in abundance.
President Zelenskyy of Ukraine initially balked in response to Trump’s initial intransient deal, which lacked the required and necessary security guarantees that Trump ignored believing he was the stronger of the two in dictatating terms. Instead of engendering friendly diplomatic negotiations, Trump’s usual inflation of facts including the amount of money Ukraine owed to support its efforts to repel the Russian invasion has been a bone of contention for his new causes célèbres, and now manic obsession for access to critical minerals.
On February 25 it was announced that a framework for a deal had been struck giving Washington access to the minerals. No details of the negotiations have been announced but Zelenskyy is headed to the White House on Friday for a meeting with Trump.
Undoubtedly, the deal will be beneficial by enriching the oligarchs and billionaire friends of Trump and Musk. Keeping his options open, Zelenskyy recently negotiated a new trade agreement with the UAE for access to Ukraine’s trillions of dollars’ worth of critical minerals and other products along with the removal of trade barriers and tariffs between the two nations and the Gulf region.
One major impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine, according to a recent article in Reuters World, is that Ukraine think tanks estimate “about 40% of its metal resources are now under Russian occupation.”
As the world moves forward towards an increasingly technical and green carbon free future, all critical minerals and rare earths are in increasingly high demand by nations around the globe.
To better understand the global importance of these minerals one only need look, as an example, at titanium, a strategic metal for which the key element in its production is ilmenite, a black iron-titanium oxide mineral of which Ukraine has vast reserves.
As the ninth most abundant chemical element on earth, titanium (Ti) can be found in our homes, consumer products, laptops, smart phones, medical devices, electric vehicles and in defense and aerospace applications across the country and around the world. The metal is described by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as “…a mineral commodity that is essential to the smooth functioning of modern industrial economies.”
With the US producing only four percent of its domestic needs, American manufacturers must rely on foreign sources for imports of titanium sponge, the highly processed and purified raw material used in the production of finished metal products. This in turn involves great strategic vulnerability related both to politics and the stability of supply chains between producers, refiners and domestic manufacturers.
Prior to Russia’s war in Ukraine, titanium sponge imports from China and Russia made up the largest share of the US domestic supply. With the imposition of sanctions against Russia, that supply has now ceased, thus forcing manufacturers to seek new sources. To circumvent the sanctions imposed on them, Russian suppliers have been busy opening new companies in neutral countries to skirt sanctions. The US in turn has also vastly reduced its dependence on Chinese suppliers as well since relations between the two nations are now at an all-time low.
Because of this the US Government in 2018 listed the metal as “strategically vulnerable” for its extensive use in the aerospace industries and in other military applications. An amendment in 2022 added by the Department of State to the Department of Defense budget request required a study on how to replace Russian and Chinese titanium with that from Ukraine. Although the final report has not been made public, word has leaked out that the report’s findings are “underwhelming.”
During a 2022 roundtable discussion by the Eastern Europe Security Institute (EESI), a policy group, titled “Risks and Opportunities for the United States in the Global Titanium Market Amid the Russia-Ukraine War” panelists confronted that challenge to the world market in overcoming any upsets for the increasingly vital material.
Moderator Mykola Hryckowian from the Center for US-Ukrainian Relations (CUSUR) opened the discussion by commenting on “how Russia uses its economic influence as a weapon to extract concessions from countries. We also see China doing the same thing.” He went on to note that US domestic vulnerability for titanium can be alleviated by Ukraine where between six and twenty percent of the world’s reserves are located.
Hryckowian also explained that Ukraine has a “closed loop” production capability from mining to sponge production and has recently developed a new innovative refining technology. Because of its massive resources and capability, a fully functioning Ukrainian titanium industry could meet all US needs for now and into the future.
It should also be noted that Russia had previously imported all its titanium ore from Ukraine before the war and has been busily sourcing supplies elsewhere while again trying to evade sanctions.
In reaction to the Ukraine-US critical minerals deal just announced today, Putin has now offered his own version of a possible US-Russian deal for critical minerals that would use the resources from the “new territories,” a reference to eastern Ukraine regions that the Russians have occupied since 2014. While noting that the “historical regions” have been “returned to the Russian Federation,” Putin neglected to mention that those same “historical regions” are mineral-rich and believed to hold most of Ukraine’s mineral wealth.
Traditionally, titanium sponge is produced using the KROLL process involving the use of chlorine gas making it extremely hazardous and environmentally detrimental. It is for this reason that all sponge production in Ukraine has ceased, considering the fact the plant, located in central Ukraine, if hit by a bomb or a missile would create a huge ecological disaster.
Ukraine has, however, developed and patented a second less hazardous process for titanium production. The VELTA TI process is more ecologically friendly producing zero waste and harmful gasses, with a low carbon footprint, and eliminates the need for sponge production while being less expensive to produce. The finished product is pure titanium metal powder that can also be used in traditional production as well as additive manufacturing processes.
With 20% percent of Ukraine’s critical mineral wealth and half of its rare earth deposits now located in the country’s Russian-occupied east and south, it remains to be seen just how any peace agreement or minerals deal will play out.
