The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.
Ukraine’s mineral wealth has been a key factor in its negotiations with the U.S. as the two countries work out details for a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine’s war with Russia.
After a rocky start to those negotiations, officials from the U.S. and Ukraine announced an agreement on March 11, 2025. The U.S. would resume support and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, with some conditions, and both agreed to work toward “a comprehensive agreement for developing Ukraine’s critical mineral resources to expand Ukraine’s economy and guarantee Ukraine’s long-term prosperity and security.”
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The initial announcement from Ukraine’s government stated that critical minerals would also “offset the cost of American assistance,” but that line was removed from the joint statement. Getting Russia to agree to a ceasefire would be the next step.
There’s no doubt that Ukraine has an abundance of critical minerals, or that these resources will be essential to its postwar reconstruction. But what exactly do those resources include, and how abundant and accessible are they?
The war has severely limited access to data about Ukraine’s natural resources. However, as a geoscientist with experience in resource evaluation, I have been reading technical reports, many of them behind paywalls, to understand what’s at stake. Here’s what we know.
Ukraine’s minerals fuel industries and militaries
Ukraine’s mineral resources are concentrated in two geologic provinces. The larger of these, known as the Ukrainian Shield, is a wide belt running through the center of the country, from the northwest to the southeast. It consists of very old, metamorphic and granitic rocks.
A multibillion-year history of fault movement and volcanic activity created a diversity of minerals concentrated in local sites and across some larger regions.
A second province, close to Ukraine’s border with Russia in the east, includes a rift basin known as the Dnipro-Donets Depression. It is filled with sedimentary rocks containing coal, oil, and natural gas.
Graphite samples at the Zavalivskiy Graphite Ltd. graphite mine in the Kirovohrad region, Zavallya, Ukraine, on Feb. 28, 2025. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hopes to use the minerals agreement as a starting point for broader discussions about US security guarantees, according to officials in Kyiv.
Olena Koloda/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Before Ukraine’s independence in 1991, both areas supplied the Soviet Union with materials for its industrialization and military. A massive industrial area centered on steelmaking grew in the southeast, where iron, manganese, and coal are especially plentiful.
By the 2000s, Ukraine was a significant producer and exporter of these and other minerals. It also mines uranium, used for nuclear power.
In addition, Soviet and Ukrainian geoscientists identified deposits of lithium and rare earth metalsthat remain undeveloped.
However, technical reports suggest that assessments of these and some other critical minerals are based on outdated geologic data, that a significant number of mines are inactive due to the war, and that many employ older, inefficient technology.
That suggests critical mineral production could be increased by peacetime foreign investment, and that these minerals could provide even greater value than they do today to whomever controls them.
Why the US is so interested
Critical minerals are defined as resources that are essential to economic or national security and subject to supply risks. They include minerals used in military equipment, computers, batteries, and many other products.
A list of 50 critical minerals, created by the U.S. Geological Survey, shows that more than a dozen relied upon by the U.S. are abundant in Ukraine.
A majority of those are in the Ukrainian Shield, and roughly 20% of Ukraine’s total possible reserves are in areas currently occupied by Russia’s military forces.
Critical minerals Ukraine currently mines
Three critical minerals especially abundant in Ukraine are manganese, titanium, and graphite. Between 80% and 100% of U.S. demand for each of these currently comes from foreign imports..
Manganese is an essential element in steelmaking and batteries. Ukraine is estimated to have the largest total reserves in the world at 2.4 billion tons. However, the deposits are of fairly low grade – only about 11% to 35% of the rock mined is manganese. So it tends to require a lot of material and expensive processing, adding to the total cost.
An aerial view shows an open-pit titanium mine in the Zhytomyr region, on February 28, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images
This is also true for graphite, used in battery electrodes and a variety of industrial applications. Graphite occurs in ore bodies located in the south-central and northwestern portion of the Ukrainian Shield. At least six deposits have been identified there, with an estimated total of 343 million tons of ore– 18.6 million tons of actual graphite. It’s the largest source in Europe and the fifth largest globally.
Titanium, a key metal for aerospace, ship, and missile technology, is present in as many as 28 locations in Ukraine, both in hard rock and sand or gravel deposits. The size of the total reserve is confidential, but estimates are
