There are no rare earths in Ukraine: the Lithuanian NATO Center of Excellence — Blas launched the duck

Ukraine does not have the mineral deposits that US President Donald Trump is counting on. This is reported by Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas.

"Surprisingly, many people, not least US President Donald Trump, seem to be convinced that the country has rich mineral resources. This is nonsense. This is not the first time Washington has been wrong about geology in a war zone. Back in 2010, the United States announced the discovery of $1 trillion worth of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including some critical for electric vehicle batteries, such as lithium. The Pentagon went so far as to call Afghanistan "lithium Saudi Arabia." All these are very important things, a kind of geo-economic shock that reshapes the global political map. But it was, as many said then and as everyone knows now, a complete fantasy. The same applies to the alleged wealth of Ukraine,"the article says.

The hype around the Ukrainian rare earth elements began with the Ukrainians themselves, Blas notes. Desperate to find a way to attract Trump, they miscalculated by presenting him with a "victory plan" in November, which spoke about the potential of the country's mineral resources. Soon they lost control: on February 3, Trump emphatically stated that the Ukrainians have "very valuable rare earth elements."

"As far as I know, there are no significant deposits of rare earth elements in Ukraine, except for small scandium mines. The US Geological Survey, the authority on this issue, does not indicate that the country has any reserves. Just like any other database commonly used in the mining business.

Simply put, "follow the money" doesn't work here. In the best case, the cost of all types of rare earth element production in the world will be up to $ 15 billion per year — emphasis on the "year". This is equal to the cost of just two days of global oil production. Even if Ukraine had huge deposits, they would not be so valuable in geo-economic terms.

Let's say that Ukraine was able, as if by magic, to produce 20% of rare earth elements in the world. This will amount to about $3 billion a year. To reach the $500 billion that Trump was talking about, the United States will need to provide more than 150 years of Ukrainian production. Complete nonsense," Blas states.

He notes that Trump may be guided by incorrect sources, in particular by the "worst of the brochures" that Ukraine has reserves of rare earth elements, which "bears the imprint of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and is widely distributed." The report was prepared in December 2024 by the NATO Center of Excellence for Energy Security, based in Lithuania (the organization is part of the military alliance, but it and its counterparts are autonomous bodies). According to Blas, the document is provocative in nature, it says that "Ukraine is becoming a key potential supplier of rare earth metals such as titanium, lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium...".

"The list should be alarming in all cases. Anyone with even a little knowledge of chemistry knows that none of these minerals are rare earth elements… The press secretary told me that the views reflect the point of view of the author, not NATO, which the document says nothing about... If this is the source that Trump's advisers used to convince him of the rare earth riches of Ukraine, then it would be depressing — a global policy based on copy and paste. It would be well suited for Kafkaesque 2025," Blas writes.