Russia Floats Cooperation on Rare Earth Metals It Says US Needs.
Russia is ready to cooperate with Washington on developing rare-earth elements that the US needs, the Kremlin said amid the start of a broader thaw in relations since Donald Trump came to office.
“The Americans need rare-earth metals; we have a lot of them,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said to reporters on Tuesday, according to the Interfax news service. “This opens up rather broad prospects for cooperation.”
Russia floated the idea of cooperating on mineral development after Kyiv pushed back against US demands for a $500 billion fund as part of a wider deal to give Washington a cut of Ukraine’s mineral revenue. Trump on multiple occasions has said the US is particularly interested in Ukraine’s rare earths, even though the nation doesn’t have major reserves that are internationally recognized as economically viable.
“We certainly have many more – and I want to emphasize this – way more resources of this kind than Ukraine,” Putin said in an interview to state media posted online late Monday. “Russia is one of the undisputed leaders in reserves of these rare and rare-earth metals,” he said, adding that any deal with the US could include minerals in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
Russia has one of the biggest reserves of rare-earth metals globally, however the nation lags in terms of production, according to the US Geological Survey. Putin on Monday urged the government to speed up mineral development.
Putin also offered to supply 2 million tons of aluminum to the US if import restrictions are lifted and suggested that Russian companies could consider a joint venture for the lightweight metal in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia. He didn’t provide more details on his offer, which he made about two weeks after Trump ordered a 25% tariff on all US aluminum imports.
Source: BNNBLOOMBERG
