Remember that was why Zelenskyy came to DC to sign a mineral deal between the US and Ukraine….and then there was that planned mash-up by Trump and mini me, Vance attacking the Z Man……and the deal was off because Z left DC without signing the deal.
Well it seems, according to Speaker Johnson, Zelenskyy has changed course….
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said during a radio interview that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has done a complete “about-face” on the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal that was not signed after a heated meeting between the two delegations late last month.
“I’m really grateful and glad that Zelensky, in the last several days, has done an about-face. He’s effectively apologized for all that. And he said, ‘Oh no, no, we would like that deal after all.’ I think he had a rude awakening,” Johnson said during his Saturday appearance on John Catsimatidis’s radio show “Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM.
“I think a lot of the people in his country were upset with the way that was handled. Certainly we all were, but we’ve got to get him back to the table,” Johnson told Catsimatidis.
I know some people were worried that with this deal Russia or China would get these minerals that are needed for our electronics industry.
This is a super plus for American industry, right?
What could go wrong?
To begin with, the contentious 28 February Oval Office meeting can’t be understood without a crucial piece of context: there are no deposits of rare-earth ore in Ukraine known to be minable in an economically viable way. And that would be true even if full-scale warfare were not raging in the country’s east, where a great deal of its mineral resources are concentrated.
Ukraine is believed to have four areas with substantial deposits of rare earth ores, according to Erik Jonsson, senior geologist with the Geological Survey of Sweden. “There are four slightly bigger deposits: Yastrubetske, Novopoltavske, Azovske, and Mazurivske. All but one of them seem to be now within or near the zone that the Russians control, as far as I can tell,” says Jonsson. “And when it comes to resources in those deposits, I mean, we have numbers; yes, that’s nice. But we have no real, detailed, outline of how those numbers were arrived at.” The numbers are believed to come from Soviet surveys dating as far back as the 1960s.
“The rare-earth deposits don’t look that relevant,” Jonsson concludes. “I mean, I wouldn’t go for them.” Two of the deposits are dominated by a mineral called britholite, he notes, which is not desirable because it has not been processed for rare earths, which means that almost nothing exists in the way of process chemistry and equipment.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-rare-earth-minerals
If this deal was not the viable at this time what was all this drama about?
Was it another show?
Is it cover for something else going on?
Was this another of the misdirection plans that this administration has?
Any thoughts?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
It’s alsao possible that Trump’s team have not done their homework and know nothing about the viability of the rare minerals. If they are in the Russian controlled zone I doubt Putin would be happy to share with Trump no matter their supposed friendship. Russia would certainly need the minerals itself or would need to barter in oreder to fund it’s own war efforts in that area.
I think someone sees possible massive profits in their pockets. chuq
Ther was a BBC report that summed it up by saying that if mining those rare minerals was possible, and economically viable, The Soviet Union would have mined them when Ukraine was still part of that country.
Best wishes, Pete.
An excellent point and I totally agree chuq