When UK officials signed a 100 year partnership with Ukraine in mid-January, they claimed to be Ukraine’s “preferred partner” in developing the country’s “critical minerals strategy”.

Yet within a month, Donald Trump had presented a proposal to Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky to access the country’s vast mineral resources as “compensation” for US support to Ukraine in the war against Russia.

Whitehall was none too pleased about Washington muscling in. 

When foreign secretary David Lammy met Zelensky in Kyiv last month he reportedly raised the issue of minerals, “a sign that Starmer’s government is still keen to get access to Ukraine’s riches”, the iPaper reported. 

Lammy earlier said, in a speech last year: “Look around the world. Countries are scrambling to secure critical minerals, just as great powers once raced to control oil”.

The UK foreign secretary was correct, but Britain itself is one of those powers, and Ukraine is one of the major countries UK officials – as well as the Trump administration – have their eyes on. 

It’s no surprise why. Ukraine has around 20,000 mineral deposits covering 116 types of minerals such as beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium, zirconium, rare earth metals, and nickel. 

The country, whose economy has been devastated by Russia’s brutal war, also possesses one of the world’s largest reserves of graphite, the largest titanium reserves in Europe, and a third of the continent’s lithium deposits. 

These resources are key for industries such as military production, high tech, aerospace, and green energy. 

In recent years, the Ukrainian government has sought to attract foreign investment to develop its critical mineral resources and signed strategic partnerships and held investment fora to showcase its mining opportunities. 

The country has also begun auctioning exploration permits for minerals such as lithium, copper, cobalt and nickel, offering lucrative investment opportunities. 

Media narratives largely parrot the UK government’s interests in Ukraine being about standing up to aggression. But Whitehall has in the past few years stepped up its interest in accessing the world’s critical minerals, not least in Ukraine.

‘Critical minerals work’

Nusrat Ghani, trade minister in Rishi Sunak’s government, held at least 10 meetings on the subject of critical minerals in 2023 and the first half of 2024, government transparency  data shows. 

Among the companies she met were giant UK mining corporations Rio Tinto and Anglo American, and arms exporter BAE Systems and military aerospace lobbyists, ADS.

It is not clear if Ukraine was the subject of these discussions but one other prominent firm Ghani met to discuss “mineral supply chains” was Rothschilds, which has extensive interests in Ukraine. 

Ghani held a discussion with the Paris-headquartered global advisory firm in April 2023 while her successor Alan Mak did so the following year in May. Mak met the firm “to discuss Rothschild’s critical minerals work”, the data shows.

The corporation was invited to the 2023 Ukraine Recovery Conference held in London and is a member of the UK-Ukraine Finance Partnership. It has also been the main adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance since 2017.

Rothschilds, on whose board sits former UK national security adviser Lord Mark Sedwill, has no less than $53bn invested in Ukraine. 

‘British-Ukrainian partnership’

Writing recently in Unherd, researcher Sang-Haw Lee quotes a senior Labour figure saying the UK was involved in extensive negotiations for the whole of last year relating to securing exclusive access to Ukraine’s minerals, but that adequate government support was not forthcoming.

Some other meetings have crept into the public domain. Last April, two prominent UK parliamentarians met one of Ukraine’s largest mining investment companies in London to discuss “British-Ukrainian partnership in the field of critical minerals mining”. 

BGV Group, which has investments of $100m in Ukrainian mining projects, held discussions with then energy minister Lord Martin Callanan and Bob Seely, then a Conservative MP who sat on parliament’s foreign affairs committee. 

The company is seeking investors for its graphite and beryllium projects and said in a media release that “Ukraine has all the prerequisites to become one of Britain’s main suppliers of critical minerals crucial for advanced technologies and the green energy transition”. 

“As Ukraine’s ultimate European ally, the UK could leverage its strong position within NATO to help secure mining sites and transportation routes”, writes Andriy Dovbenko, the founder of UK-Ukraine TechExchange.

‘Vast resources’

The UK government’s ‘Ukraine Business Guide’ notes that “Ukraine has vast resources” and “a rich mineral base of iron ore, manganese, coal, and titanium”.

Certainly, enhancing access to critical minerals has been a broad priority across Whitehall over the last three years. 

The UK produced its first-ever Critical Minerals Strategy in 2022 and updated this with a ‘refresh’ the following year. It identifies 18 minerals with “high criticality” for the UK, including several present in Ukraine, such as graphite, lithium and rare earth elements. 

The UK’s strategy aims, among other things, to “support UK companies to participate overseas” in supply chains for these minerals and “champion London as the world’s capital of responsible finance for critical minerals”.

As part of its critical minerals strategy, the government set up a so-called Task & Finish group, analysing the risks to UK industry, and including participants from BAE, Rio Tinto and ADS. The group highlights titanium, rare earth elements, cobalt and gallium as among the minerals with a supply risk to the UK military sector.

The UK has also launched a Critical Mineral Intelligence Centre and established a Critical Minerals Expert Committee to advise the government.

A report by the foreign affairs committee on critical minerals published in December 2023  concluded that “the UK cannot afford to leave itself vulnerable on supply chains that are of such strategic importance”. 

A sign of how seriously the government is taking the issues is that it says it will “ensure consideration for critical minerals is embedded” in the free trade agreements it is negotiating with a range of countries.

‘Regulatory structures’

Accessing minerals overseas often depends on loosening government regulations to enable foreign corporations to strike favourable deals.

The 100 year partnership declaration commits the UK and Ukraine to “supporting development of a Ukrainian critical minerals strategy and necessary regulatory structures required to support the maximisation of benefits from Ukraine’s natural resources, through the possible establishment of a Joint Working Group”. 

The thrust of the partnership is to “support a more enabling environment for private sector participation in the clean energy transition” and to “attract investments of British companies in the development of renewable energy sources.”

More generally, the two sides will “work together to boost and modernise Ukraine’s economy by progressing reforms that aim to attract private finance” and “boost investor confidence”. 

As Declassified recently showed, British aid to Ukraine is focused on promoting these pro-private sector reforms and on pressing the government in Kyiv to open up its economy to foreign investors. 

Foreign Office documents on its flagship aid project in Ukraine, which supports privatisation, note that the war provides “opportunities” for Ukraine delivering on “some hugely important reforms”.

The UK supports a project called SOERA (State-owned enterprises reform activity in Ukraine), which is funded by USAID with the UK Foreign Office as a junior partner. 

SOERA works to “advance privatization of selected SOEs [state-owned enterprises], and develop a strategic management model for SOEs remaining in state ownership.”

UK documents note the programme has already “prepared the groundwork” for privatisation, a key plank of which is to change Ukraine’s legislation. 

“SOERA worked hand-in-hand with GoU and proposed 25 pieces of legislation of which 13 were adopted and implemented”, the most recent documents note. 

‘Geostrategic rivalries’

Much UK foreign policy and wars can be explained by Whitehall wanting British corporations to get their hands on other countries’ resources. 

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was mainly about oil while decades earlier the UK’s brutal war in  Malaya in the 1950s was substantially about rubber. Britain’s support for apartheid South Africa is significantly explained by the UK wanting continued access to South Africa’s massive mineral resources.

But the main concern now is China, which is the biggest producer of 12 out of the 18 minerals assessed by the UK as critical. 

The Ministry of Defence’s major geopolitical forecast, its ‘Global Strategic Trends’, released last year, makes 57 mentions of minerals, noting that they “will become of increasing geopolitical importance” and could lead to “new geostrategic rivalries and tensions”.

History suggests that Whitehall’s international strategy on critical minerals, and its scramble for Ukraine’s, will continue to shape UK foreign policy and contribute to these future international tensions.

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