Washington and Kiev are still negotiating on rare metals. What about the possibility of lithium mining in Ukraine and what do people who live near the deposits think about it?
In Polokhivka in Ukraine as if time stood still. Only a handful of people live there, the houses are empty and dilapidated. Harvested fields forever. The neighboring village of Kopanki looks the same. Almost all the houses in it are abandoned. Locals say that during the whole of last year, only one child was born here.
Pensioner Volodymyr from the village of Kopanki says: "I started working in 1976. I was employee number 400 in the collective farm, and now there are probably not even 100 residents. There are only funerals, not a single wedding. Nothing is like before."
People are leaving Kopanki because there is no work. The bus only comes twice a week. Probably Donald tramp he had not heard of these villages. But this region in central Ukraine is important to him, or rather, the fact that it lies underground here - the largest lithium reserves in the country.
Awaiting agreement
Those deposits could be the subject of a deal on raw materials between Washington and Kiev. The first attempt at an agreement failed in February. The final version of the deal is still being negotiated. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svirdenko says her government has sent a team to Washington to speed up negotiations.
Ukraine has been known to have lithium deposits since the 1970s. However, the one in the area of these two villages is the only one that has already been explored according to today's criteria. All other sites were investigated in the Soviet era. Until now, lithium has not been mined in Ukraine.
No excavation in sight.
In 2017, the Ukrainian firm UkrLithiumMining received permission to explore the deposit in Polohivka. This was done between 2018 and 2020. It is estimated that it is about 40 million tons of lithium, which would be the largest deposit in Europe.
The director of the company, Mykhailo Heichenko, told Ukrainian television that the test wells, which went up to 600 meters deep, promise about one and a half million tons of ore per year for twenty years. But the company has not progressed far, because according to the data of the municipality of Smoline, on the territory of which the mentioned villages are located, no work is currently taking place there. This worries the local government. Back in 2023, local deputies marked the company's activities as unsatisfactory: "The Smolina municipal council wants the company to intensify its work here. We asked the company to discuss social issues that are important for the municipality. But to date, nothing has been done," says the head of the municipality, Mikola Masura.
In March, the company announced on its website that the Poohivka site belongs to the Ukrainian people, but that the company received a permit for exploration and exploitation and that it paid 2,6 million euros.
Fear of pollution
People who live there hope for new jobs, but at the same time some fear that the environment will be polluted. Tatjana from the village of Kopanki says: "We are not against it. But he has to make sure that we don't run out of water and roads, that our infrastructure is repaired. Of course we want that to happen and that the municipal budget be filled with money."
Mikola Masura from Smolin also expresses fear that a problem with water could arise: "We recently learned that UkrLithiumMining is digging wells of different depths and that they will use the water for themselves. That would be a disaster, because people's wells could dry up in a diameter of several kilometers, and there is already less water in them due to climate change and other factors. The ponds are also drying up."
Last year, UkrLithiumMining announced on its website that the company had examined the possible consequences of exploitation. And now the company has added an explicit position that in case of exploitation "there will be no consequences for the sources used by the municipality". And in response to comments that the works are being delayed, the company announced: "In April 2024, the company prepared a temporary feasibility study, which is an important stage on the way to the start of the works. Currently, the next important phase is being prepared - the final feasibility study."
The first projects under the agreement?
Four lithium deposits are currently being explored in Ukraine. Two are located in areas occupied by Russia. The Kruta-Balka deposit is located in the Zaporozhye region, and the Shevchenko deposit is in the Donetsk region. The remaining two deposits are in central Ukraine, one near Polohivka, and the other near Dobra, which is the most promising. Ukrainian geologist Bohdan Slobodyan says that it was examined back in the Soviet era. According to estimates at the time, it could be twice as large as the site in Polohivka. But for now there is no current research.
"Financial Times" calculated at the beginning of March that the Irish company TechMet is interested in the Dobra deposit and would participate in the tender. The partner of this Irish firm is billionaire Ronald Lauder, otherwise a friend of US President Trump. According to this newspaper, Dobra could be one of the first projects after the conclusion of the agreement between the United States and Ukraine on rare metals. If the agreement is signed at all. Then the matter could be started in Polohivka as well.
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