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Ukraine: All Lithium Reserves and Mineral Resources in War Zones
Descriptionby Simone Fant via Renewable Matter.eu

Image: Matthew De Livera (Unsplash)Geologists call it the Ukrainian shield. That land in the middle which starts from the northern borderwith Belarus up to the shores of the Azov Sea, in the south of Donbass. According to the studies ofthe Ukrainian geological service, in the ancient rocks of this shield are hidden lithium deposits withgreat potential. Findings that have been identified mainly around the area of Mariupol, the port city ofDonbass torn apart by Russian bombing.

ALGORA.COMLithium deposits
Lithium deposits in Ukraine“This may not be the main reason for the invasion, but undoubtedly Ukraine’s mineral wealth is oneof the reasons why this country is so important to Russia,” said Rod Schoonover, former director of
the Environment and Natural Resources Section of the U.S. National Intelligence Council.
A wealth confirmed by the fact that Ukrainian lithium had begun to attract global attention as early aslast year, before the Russian invasion halted exploration. Last November, in fact, the Australiancompany European Lithium said it was close to securing the rights to two promising deposits of lithium
in the region of Donetsk (eastern Ukraine) and Kirovograd, in the center of the country. In the samemonth, the Chinese company Chengxin Lithium has also asked for the rights on some deposits, amove that would allow China to win the first deposit in Europe.
“Since there are no developed deposits, I highly doubt that lithium resources are the motivation
for attacks in the Southeast,” Schoonover tells Renewable Matter. “But if this region falls underRussian control, lithium reserves would certainly be a co-benefit for the Kremlin. Certainly the rest of
the world would have a say. It would not import lithium from a pariah state (a nation that is notrecognized by the governments of other countries due to human rights violations), especially when
there are better alternatives in geopolitically more favorable countries.”
Nothing is thrown away of pegmatitic rocks
One of the few geologists to have seen these ancient rocks is Andrea Dini, a researcher at the Italian
CNR’s Institute of Geosciences and Georesources, who participated in three campaigns at theKhoroshiv-Volodarsk mine in northern Ukraine. “The mine I saw never produced lithium, because its
rocks contain lithium minerals (zinnwaldite, trilithionite and polylithionite) that contain fluorine,” Dini tells
Renewable Matter, “and are problematic for the metallurgical processes of extracting the metal. Since
1991, Ukrainians here have been extracting mostly precious stones.”
Over the past two decades, however, the Ukrainian Geological Survey has conducted scientific andstrategic research, identifying several areas with lithium minerals such as spodumene with very highpotential. “The very ancient rocks that lithium producers are interested in are pegmatites containing

ALGORA.COMspodumene (lithium aluminum silicate), the mineral preferred by industry,” explains Dini. “These rocks
do not have polluting metals such as lead, zinc and cadmium, but they contain silicates (quartz,feldspar) that as waste material can be sold to the ceramic industry.” In short, of pegmatites,
nothing is thrown away. According to the researcher, Ukraine and Serbia probably have thegreatest potential for extracting lithium in all of Europe.
The other mineral resources in Ukraine
Ukraine has 10% of the world’s iron reserves, 6% of titanium and 20% of graphite. “In geology,
this extremely flat region is called peneplain,” Andrea Dini points out, “because it is so ancient that it
has been flattened by erosion. Many of the rocks are billions of years old and you don’t see them on
the surface because they are covered by layers of sediment.”
There are more than just minerals in Ukraine, however. In the north east, near the Russian border,
there is a 400-million-year-old sedimentary basin filled with organic material and black shale rocks.
“These are black slates with large amounts of coal and methane. For example, part of US energy
independence is due to the extraction of methane (Shale Gas) from these rocks on US soil.”
There is also another sector that has a close link with Ukraine’s resources: Italian ceramics. The
ceramic industrial district of Sassuolo is one of the most important in the world and the quality of its
tiles also depended on the importation from Ukraine of clay and kaolin, a mineral that is extracted
from the quarries of Donbass. In the Italian ceramics industry, 25% of raw materials – including clay
considered prized – came from Ukraine. After the Russian invasion, companies in the district will haveto find compatible and competitive alternatives. According to insiders, first of all they need to findanother recipe, that is, a new mixture of clays, kaolins and feldspars with material imported from othercountries.