$350bn Ukraine’s ‘critical’ resources in Russian-held territory: Kyiv

KYIV: Around $350 billion of worth of Ukraine’s critical resources are in areas captured by Russia, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday, as Washington pushes for a deal to secure preferential access to the country’s resource base.

Kyiv is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s calls for Ukraine’s resources to be used as compensation to the United States for aid delivered under President Joe Biden.

But large parts of Ukraine’s resource base is in its industrial eastern Donbas region, where Russia has seized territory and is still advancing.

“We have information that, unfortunately, there is about $350 billion worth of these useful critical materials in temporarily occupied territory,” deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko told a news conference in Kyiv.

She added that some statistics on the deposits were “obsolete”, but the estimate was based on geological surveys and open source data.