- An agreement giving the U.S. rights over some of Ukraine’s minerals may be based on decades-old data, according to reporting from S&P Global. Without an accurate measure of the quantity of minerals—like cobalt, lithium, and titanium—it’s difficult to know whether it makes economic sense to mine them from the earth; what’s more, many of the reserves are either entirely untapped or in Russian-occupied territory.
The U.S. and Ukraine are close to signing a deal that could give the U.S. substantial control over the smaller country’s mineral resources—something President Donald Trump has pushed for.
