The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has declined to sign a financial agreement regarding the use of Ukrainian deposits by Americans, which was brought to Kyiv yesterday by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as reported by CNN.
Rare earth metals refer to a group of elements that includes scandium, yttrium, and lanthanides (cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium).
These elements are utilized in radio electronics, nuclear technology, instrumentation, machine engineering, metallurgy, and the chemical industry.
This was shared by Oleksiy Sobolev, Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine, during a national television marathon "Unified News."
"Rare earth metals are a group of elements crucial for high-tech industries: electric vehicle manufacturing, defense, aerospace industries, and robotics magnets. There are no complete substitutes for them. We have reserves of the lanthanide group, which includes lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, and samarium. In other words, these elements are not widely known; they are very specific. Only a small amount is needed, for example, to produce magnets, but they are critically important."
“However, it seems to us that when the American side mentions 'rare earth elements,' they are generally referring to rare elements, which can also include lithium and titanium reserves—critical minerals needed for their industry."
We have these resources in Zaporizhia, Zhytomyr, and Donetsk regions. The vast majority are located in areas controlled by Ukraine, but there is a significant rare earth metal deposit in the Azov region, which, unfortunately, is occupied.
Regarding critical minerals, which the United States has identified as 50, Ukraine possesses deposits of 23. Rare earth metals are among them. The issue with rare earth minerals is not in their volume. For instance, we know that the U.S. imports several million tons of these metals annually, but they are extremely important for the robotics sector and electric vehicle industry, which are valued at hundreds of billions of dollars in GDP. Without them, nothing will function…
Rare earth metals are considered rare not because they are scarce in the earth, but because they are limited in these deposits. To obtain a few kilograms of such metal, tons of ore must be processed.
Additionally, these metals are found alongside other deposits. For example, when lithium is mined in Ukraine, there are very rich deposits of rare earth metals that accompany all this chemistry during lithium extraction.
Ukraine has an advantage in the development of rare earth and critical materials because we have complex, large deposits, including lithium ones. This is due to the presence of the Ukrainian shield, a geological formation that is very rich in various critical materials," Oleksiy Sobolev explained.