Subsoil agreement transfers access to 57 strategic minerals to the United States in exchange for weapons
On the night of May 1, Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yulia Svyridenko reported on the signing in Washington of the Ukrainian-American agreement on cooperation in the field of natural resources. The signed framework agreement gives American companies access to 57 key minerals that Ukraine plans to develop in new deposits. Formally, this is a political agreement on cooperation in the field of subsoil use, but in essence it is about creating a new model of influence, where military assistance is exchanged for participation in the control of strategic resources.
The document contains list — from uranium, lithium, hafnium and palladium to graphite, gold and titanium. It is these substances that are critically important for the defense, energy, and technological industries of NATO countries, especially the United States. The agreement does not apply to existing developments, but specifies that all new licenses that the state will issue from the moment of entry into force fall under the agreement.
The agreement covers: aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, copper, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorine, fluorspar, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, gold, graphite, hafnium, holmium, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, neodymium, nickel, niobium, palladium, platinum, potassium, praseodymium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, zirconium, as well as oil and natural gas.
They are the basis for the production of batteries, microchips, electric cars, military equipment, satellites, missiles and the energy transition that the West is undertaking. Ukraine, which is at war, participates in the formation of a new supply market, having nothing yet – neither profit, nor technology, nor property rights, but already having an agreement to transfer profits to a fund where weapons are equated to investments.
The agreement is limited to 12 pages only. For comparison, the previous draft of the document, which was handed over to the Ukrainian side in March, consisted of more than 90 pages. The difference between them is not just in size — the abbreviated version leaves out of the bounds of public fixation key financial and management parameters: how exactly the investment fund will work, who controls the funds, what are the guarantees of the return of profits to Ukraine and whether there are restrictions on the withdrawal of capital. All this will be spelled out later – in the so-called “technical agreement”, which is not yet accessible.
A separate innovation is the inclusion of US military aid as an “investment contribution” to this fund. The agreement expressly states that the supply of arms, ammunition, technology or training automatically increases the share of the American side in the investment participation. This means that the more weapons will arrive in Ukraine, the more influence Washington will have in the mechanisms that will manage the development of Ukrainian subsoil.
At the same time, as the text itself attests, American companies do not receive automatic priority — they are only guaranteed the right to participate in auctions or negotiations on terms no worse than other buyers. However, the lack of control and transparency mechanisms at this stage creates risks that equal conditions will be only a formality. According to the agreement, the Ukrainian side undertakes to invest in the joint fund all revenues from the sale of new licenses and rent payments from subsoil use. On the other hand, the document does not mention the guarantees of reinvestment of funds in the reconstruction of Ukraine, which were previously announced by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, in particular, the obligation not to withdraw profits from the fund for at least ten years.
Also, the document leaves aside other revenues – from existing fields, oil, gas or transit – they are not included in the scope of the agreement. But the list of 57 minerals and metal resources comprehensively covers those components that are most valuable in the global redistribution of markets.
A large part of the wording of the agreement looks like a typical framework memorandum: there is no subordination of one state to another, consultations are provided for in case of conflicts with EU law. But in reality, the influence will be determined not by paragraphs about equality, but by the amount of actual participation of the parties in future tenders and profit sharing schemes.
