Putin offers Russian and Ukrainian rare minerals to US
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he is open to offering the US access to Russia's rare minerals, including from Russian-occupied Ukraine.This comes after US President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for Ukraine to give up some of its minerals in exchange for support, in a deal which is currently being finalised, according to a Ukrainian minister.In an interview on Russian state-owned broadcaster Rossiya 1 on Monday, Putin said he was ready to "offer" resources to American partners in joint projects, including mining in Russia's "new territories".The proposal could also see the two countries collaborating on aluminium extraction and supply to the US to stabilise prices, he added.
In his televised interview, Putin countered Trump's push to access Ukraine's mineral deposits, saying they were ready to work with "foreign partners" including companies on mining minerals.Ukraine has been facing growing pressure from the Trump administration to sign the deal, which has ended up in the centre of the growing rift between the US and Ukrainian presidents.Ukraine's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, Olga Stefanishyna, posted on X on Monday that negotiations on a deal allowing US access to Ukrainian mineral deposits, "have been very constructive, with nearly all key details finalised".Similarly - albeit in a different approach to the US - the European Union has also proposed a partnership with Ukraine that would give it access to minerals in what the the European Commissioner for industrial strategy, Stéphane Séjourné, called a "win-win".Kyiv estimates that about 5% of the world's critical raw materials are in Ukraine. However, some of the mineral deposits have been seized by Russia in the three years since its invasion of Ukraine.Putin said a potential US-Ukraine deal on rare minerals was not a concern and that Russia "undoubtedly have, I want to emphasise, significantly more resources of this kind than Ukraine". "As for the new territories, it's the same. We are ready to attract foreign partners to the so-called new, to our historical territories, which have returned to the Russian Federation," he added.He also suggested that Russia and the US could collaborate on aluminium production in Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, where one Russian aluminium maker, Rusal, has its largest smelters. Putin's televised comments followed a cabinet meeting on Russia's natural resources.On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists the proposal opened up "quite broad prospects", adding that the US needed rare earth minerals and Russia had "a lot of them".
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