Who owns the assets that Putin offered to the United States?

Some of these assets are controlled by structures close to the Russian president

In Russia there are at least 14 large deposits of rare earth metals with a reserve volume of more than 26 million tons, they are being developed, in particular, by billionaires from the Forbes list who are under sanctions, Vorstka found out after studying a report on the state and use of mineral resources of the Russian Federation. The data in the document is as of January 1, 2023.

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Rosatom, wife of Putin's scientific director and the richest man in Russia

According to the report, seven fields are under development in the Murmansk region with reserves of 11.5 million tons. Four more are at the stage of preparation for development - in Yakutia, Komi, Irkutsk and Murmansk regions. The remaining three fields in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Yakutia and the Irkutsk Region are in the undistributed fund.

The largest deposit is being developed by the Lovozersky Mining and Processing Plant, whose founder is the state corporation Rosatom. Its supervisory board is headed by the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergei Kiriyenko.

The largest number of deposits - six (one of them is just being prepared for development) - is being developed by the mineral fertilizer manufacturer PhosAgro, 20.6% of the shares of which belong to one of the richest women in Russia, Tatyana Litvinenko (net worth, according to Forbes, $2.45 billion), the wife of Vladimir Putin's scientific director Vladimir Litvinenko.

One of the fields in the Murmansk region is being developed by the Acron company, its owner is billionaire Vyacheslav Kantor (under EU and US sanctions), whose fortune is estimated at $9.8 billion. As the Dossier Center wrote , the billionaire owes his fortune to the former deputy director of the SVR, Yuri Zubakov.

In Komi, the only deposit of rare earth metals is being prepared to be developed by the oil company Lukoil, which belongs to the richest man in Russia, Vagit Alekperov (net worth $28.6 billion), who is under sanctions from Great Britain and other countries.

In the Irkutsk region, a small field is being prepared to be developed by the Technoinvest Alliance company, which as of 2021 is associated with Surgutinvestneft through register holders (no newer data available). In Yakutia, the Tomtorskoye deposit is going to be developed by TriArk Mining, its CEO Alexey Aleshin is associated with the ICT group, the founder of which is billionaire Alexander Nesis (net worth $2.1 billion in 2023).

Vladimir Putin invited Donald Trump to jointly develop deposits in the occupied regions of Ukraine

Vladimir Putin announced his readiness to “joint work” with the United States on the extraction of rare earth metals on February 24 in a conversation with reporters. He also noted that cooperation in this area is also possible in “new territories” - in the occupied regions of Ukraine.

They contained a third of all Ukrainian rare earth metals. 2.2 million tons of these metals in the “new territories” are located in the Novopoltavskoye deposit in the Zaporozhye region. Ukraine has not yet developed many deposits of these minerals.

Rare earth metals are 17 chemical elements discovered in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These include scandium, yttrium and the lanthanide group (lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium and others). These metals are part of permanent magnets and semiconductors needed for smartphones, electric vehicles, MRI machines, etc. They are one of the subjects of the US-China trade war: in 2022, Congress banned the use of such magnets of Chinese origin for national defense purposes. Subsequently, China also imposed restrictions on the export of rare earth metals.

As Vorstka previously reported, in early February, Trump said he wanted to negotiate an agreement with Ukraine that would give the United States access to rare earth minerals worth $500 billion in exchange for military assistance. It was planned that Vladimir Zelensky and US Vice President JD Vance would sign this agreement during the Munich Security Conference . However, Vladimir Zelensky refused to sign this agreement, since it did not contain security guarantees for Ukraine in exchange for access to rare earth metals. After this, Donald Trump entered into direct conflict with Zelensky : the US President accused Ukraine of stealing American money and starting a war with Russia. Such statements by the US President outraged European leaders, Democrats and part of the Republican Party establishment, who publicly spoke out in support of the Ukrainian leader.

Photo: Lovozersky GOK. Country Rosatom
Infographic: El

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