Minerals in exchange for weapons: what plan does the US offer

Aid to Ukraine is critically delayed in the US. Republicans who supported Ukraine have now changed their minds and demand payment for all weapons. Including minerals.

On February 15, the former president of the United States of America and a potential candidate for the same position, Donald Trump, said that he wants to provide loan aid to Ukraine.

"They want to give them another 60 billion dollars. Do it like this. Borrow their money. If they succeed, they will refund us. If they can't do it, they don't have to give us our money back. Why should you just give them money? Make it a loan," Trump said during his election campaign in South Carolina. The former US president compared such a plan to deals he had previously made with potentially successful athletes who had no money at the start of their careers.

"I do this with athletes. For example, with professional golfers, who, in my opinion, are very good. They have no money, but they have great talent. I say: "Here's the deal," he added.
In its turn, The Hill edition on February 14, a day before Trump's statements, reported that Republican senators discussed with Trump a proposal for loans with certain conditions before the approval of the aid package for Ukraine and Israel.

Republicans said they reached out to Trump about his idea and spoke to him by phone on February 12.

"There was a group of us, and we discussed how to understand what he was thinking and whether he was serious about it (giving aid in the form of a loan), because if so, then let's find out how it can be implemented. And it was a really great conversation," said Senator Markwayne Mullin. It was here that the proposal to exchange weapons for Ukrainian subsoil was first voiced. Senator Kevin Cramer said he had also spoken with Trump about the idea, which he said was gaining "a lot of momentum" and that he didn't think was "overwhelmingly offensive to the recipients."

"I mean, for Ukraine, which is rich in minerals, things that we need as a free country, or the frozen Russian assets that we have, why don't we make those things available to the American taxpayer as a thank you for this generosity," the senator noted.
Already on February 18, US Senator Lindsey Graham voiced this idea about fossils on CBS News. He attributed this proposal to Trump personally.

“I want to turn the bailout into a loan, and that makes sense to me… We're $34 trillion in debt. Ukraine has minerals, they have a lot of resources," Graham said.
If aid is provided in the form of loans, he estimates the bill will pass the House of Representatives and be able to garner six to eight Republican votes in the Senate.

"This is Trump's idea. If it is accepted, I think you can get a lot of votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate," the Republican senator added. A small detail about the current state of American politics: Graham used to be an ardent supporter of Ukraine. He recently demanded that our country receive enough weapons.

"If we cut off (stop providing aid – ed.) Ukraine, it will be ten times worse than in Afghanistan," Graham said back in October 2023.
But now he claims about loans.

"I hope that the House of Representatives will turn the additional aid package into a loan and not a grant. Until that day comes, I will vote against it," Graham said after speaking with Trump.
However, what can Ukraine offer to the States?

In April 2023, Forbes estimated the value of Ukraine's minerals. Journalists write that the state has not calculated the total value of natural resources for a long time. As of early 2005, explored reserves were estimated in government documents as "$150,000 per capita," and Western experts estimated more than $200,000, corresponding to a combined estimate of $7-10 trillion.

"Today, according to Forbes, this amount has grown to almost $15 trillion. At the same time, more than 70% of the total amount falls on only three regions – Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Luhansk. Of the total value of minerals, 62% is provided by hard coal, 14% by iron ore, each of the other assets is less than 5%. The total amount of minerals is 111 billion tons," the journalists write.
In turn, economist Oleksiy Kush also considered whether Ukrainians can pay for weapons with fossils.

"I think Americans are primarily interested in reserves of apatite-ilmenite, titanium-magnesium-containing ores. Titanium is the most important element of aircraft and rocket engineering. We have 600-700 billion dollars of these reserves. (…) Next – lithium, graphite and germanium. The total reserves are up to 200 billion dollars," he writes in a comment on Liga.net.
He notes that it will be easiest with titanium, because many deposits have not yet been explored. As for lithium, graphite and germanium, here "everything is also owned by the state or by the "gaskets", which have not yet begun to extract anything, that is, they can be easily moved."

"The number one task for the USA now is to get rid of dependence on China in terms of rare earth metal production (manufacturers of semiconductors, 5G base stations, solar batteries, etc.)," the expert notes. China now controls 90% of the rare earth market and skillfully uses this, blackmailing the US and imposing restrictions on the export of this type of raw material. But Ukraine has total reserves of rare earths in the amount of approximately 100 billion dollars.

"The problem is that the extraction of this raw material is extremely harmful to the environment and human health. This is soil and groundwater pollution," Kush emphasizes. Finally, Ukraine has large deposits of uranium. They are worth up to 30-50 billion dollars, "seemingly not much, but strategically very valuable." "To summarize, it turns out that up to one trillion dollars of natural reserves in Ukraine have a strategic value for the West. If you apply a reserve valuation factor of 0.1, you get an estimated value of approximately $100 billion. That is, by allocating $100 billion to us, they will take away lithium and other rare earths, graphite, germanium, titanium, and uranium," warns the expert. In this case, Kush concludes, we will have to say goodbye to the ideas of building a cluster economy model in Ukraine, when the added value remains within the country. We will forget about the transition from a commodity model to a more complex economic profile.

The White House does not consider a loan for Ukraine a good idea. "Economic assistance is provided in the form of grants, because asking Ukraine to take on a significant amount of debt right now, when it is fighting for its life, we do not consider it the best way forward. We believe that the package that we drafted and that the Democratic and Republican senators voted for last week is the right package," said the US President's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Also, not all senators support Trump's idea. "Trump is not the president of the United States now. He had terrible ideas when he was president of the United States. Now his ideas are even worse, and the fact that my fellow Republicans are still allowing him to pull his strings is tragic,” stressed Democratic Senator Chris Murphy.

Some politicians from the Republican wing also oppose it. "In the case of Ukraine, for example, they will not be able to pay. Their economy is destroyed. This (credit) is a fig leaf," said Senator Mitt Romney.

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