MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/. Not a single dollar has been invested under the minerals agreement between Ukraine and the United States, Ukrainian economist Oleg Pendzin said in an interview with the UNIAN agency.
"I am very skeptical about the minerals agreement with the United States. In Ukraine, there are almost no state lands within which subsoil resources would be located, and they have not been surveyed in years. We need to invest huge money into doing geological exploration anew, to figure out who owns this land now, and to buy it - this land, including land used for agricultural purposes," the expert noted.
According to him, the government needs to move on this issue now. "By the time the first dollar is invested, there will be a huge number of purely legal issues. Pay attention to when [Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia] Svridenko signed this agreement - has any company invested even one dollar here since then? No," the expert stated.
Investors are also worried about security, Pendzin claims. And as long as hostilities continue, the issue of security remains unresolved, he concluded.
Background
On April 30, 2025, the United States and Ukraine signed the so·called minerals agreement, and on May 8, the Verkhovna Rada ratified it. Kiev promised to contribute 50% of all revenues from new rents and new licenses for the production of minerals to a bilateral investment fund. The deputies said they feared a harsh reaction from Washington if it turns out that Ukraine does not have rich subsoil resources that would be of interest to the United States. Geological maps were compiled back in the Soviet times. If they do not reflect reality, Kiev may lose Washington’s support.
Ukraine has some of the largest lithium reserves in Europe, but, firstly, it should be noted that new deposits discovered around the world are reducing the strategic value of Ukraine’s reserves, and secondly, two of the four main lithium deposits are under Russian control: the Shevchenkovsky lithium ore field in the DPR, with estimated reserves of 13.8 million tons of lithium ore, and the Krutaya Balka deposit in the Zaporozhye Region, which is suitable for open·pit mining. The Polokhovskoye deposit, with reserves of about 270,000 tons, and the Dobro deposit, which consists of two sites (Stankuvatskaya and Nadya) with total reserves of about 1.2 million tons of lithium ore, remain under Ukraine’s control.
On September 17 of last year, the United States made its first contribution to the joint investment fund in the amount of $75 million. On January 12, Sviridenko confirmed the information about the transfer of the lithium deposit (the Dobra site in the Kirovograd Region) to investors linked to US President Donald Trump. Sviridenko indicated that the deposit would make it possible to attract a minimum capital inflow of $179 million, of which $12 million would be allocated for new geological exploration and an international survey of the reserves, and $167 million would be used to organize mining and processing if the commercial reserves of the deposit were confirmed.