Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky say they are interested in a deal that would swap American arms for Ukrainian minerals. While Ukraine has trillions of dollars worth of minerals, including lithium and titanium, any such deal would have to overcome the fact that a lot of those resources exist in territory captured by Russia or too close to the front lines to mine.
“I want to have security of rare earths,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office earlier this week. “We’re putting in hundreds of billions of dollars. They have great rare earths. And I want security of the rare earths, and they’re willing to do it.”
Trump’s interest is spurred by the vast amount of such resources China possesses.
What Trump meant by “rare earths and other things” remains unclear. Ukraine has deposits of 20 of the world’s critical minerals and metals like titanium and lithium, the Kyiv Independent reported. Titanium is used in the aerospace and defense industries, and lithium is an essential component of microchips and electric vehicle batteries.
“Ukraine also possesses rare earth elements — under which titanium and lithium do not fall — such as cerium, yttrium, lanthanum, and neodymium,” the publication stated. “Demand for these materials has jumped in recent years as the world shifts to renewable forms of energy. Rare earth elements are crucial for making the powerful magnets used in wind turbine generators.”
Having floated the idea to U.S. officials last year, Zelensky said it would be “fair” to give U.S. companies access to the minerals as Washington has helped Kyiv fend off Russian forces, according to the Kyiv Post. “I would like U.S. business … to develop this field here,” Zelensky said, according to comments published by his office.
“We are open to the fact that all this can be developed with our partners, who are both helping us to protect our land and pushing the enemy back with their weapons, and sanctions packages — and this is absolutely fair.”
Not surprisingly, Russian officials slammed the idea of a minerals-for-arms deal.
“If we call things as they are, this is a proposal to buy help — in other words, not to give it unconditionally, or for some other reasons, but specifically to provide it on a commercial basis,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday. “It would be better of course for the assistance to not be provided at all, as that would contribute to the end of this conflict,” he added.
Wanting a deal is one thing, but getting access to some of the minerals will prove challenging.
A little more than half of Ukraine’s mineral resources, valued at more than $7.5 trillion, are contained in the four regions Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed in September 2022, and of which his army occupies a considerable swathe, The Independent reported on Wednesday. That includes Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, though Kherson holds little value in terms of minerals, the publication added. The Crimean peninsula, annexed and occupied by Russian forces in 2014, also holds roughly £206 billion (about $258 billion) worth of minerals. Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, which borders the largely occupied regions of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia and is threatened by the advancing Russian army, “contains an additional $3.5 trillion in mineral resources,” The Independent explained.
Not only is a huge amount of Ukraine’s mineral resources in Russian hands, a lot of it is so close to the front lines that mining, processing and transporting it would be virtually impossible. For example, a major lithium reserve “is within 10 miles of the front line in the Donetsk region,” The Washington Post noted. “Analysts have estimated that Moscow has already managed to seize control of more than $12 trillion worth of Ukrainian energy assets, metals and minerals.”
Given all the challenges, this is a deal that may never come to pass. If it does, however, it could greatly benefit both countries.
The Latest
Russian efforts to advance on several towns in the Donetsk region have been temporarily blunted, while the pace of fighting is picking up in Luhansk Oblast. Here are some of the key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment.
- Kursk: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast on Feb. 4 but did not make any confirmed advances.
- Kharkiv: Russian forces continued limited ground attacks toward Kharkiv City on Feb. 4 but did not advance.
- Luhansk: Russian forces advanced toward Kupyansk on Feb. 4. They attacked near Lyman, but did not advance.
- Donetsk: Russian forces tried to push toward Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, Pokrovsk, Siversk, Kurakhove and Velyka Novosilka but did not make confirmed advances.
- Zaporizhzhia: Russian forces continued limited ground attacks in the Dnipro direction immediately east of Kherson City near Antonivka and Prydniprovske on Feb. 3 and 4, but did not advance.
There have been “no signs showing” that North Korean troops deployed in Russia’s Kursk region have been engaged in combat since mid-January, according to South Korean intelligence. That assessment is in contrast to what the head of Ukraine’s spy agency told us last week.
“The National Intelligence Service (NIS) disclosed the intelligence, confirming a recent report from The New York Times that North Korean soldiers who fought alongside Russian troops in battle against Ukraine have been pulled from the front lines in mid-January due to heavy casualties citing Ukrainian and U.S. officials,” the South Korean Yonhap News Agency wrote on Tuesday. “The spy agency echoed the news report, saying that heavy casualties appear to be one reason for the absence of North Korean troops, adding that efforts are underway to determine the exact reason.”
Last week, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR), told us that there were still about 8,000 North Korean troops on the front and that they were still fighting. At the time, he called reports about their withdrawal from the front lines “wrong.”
On Wednesday, Budanov told us that his assessment is still different than what was reported by the Times, but it has been updated. There are now fewer than 4,000 troops there, he told us, but are no longer fighting.
“We don’t see a full withdrawal of North Korean troops,” Budanov told us, adding that GUR is conducting further assessments of the situation. “They are not conducting any infantry operations right now, but they are regrouping.”
Zelensky made a rare acknowledgment that Russia will likely hold onto land it has seized, at least in the near term.
“We cannot return all our territories,” Zelensky told broadcaster Piers Morgan in a wide-ranging interview released Tuesday. “We have adequate people. We cannot lose millions of people for the result that – and it is not yet clear – that it will happen as of today.”
While seemingly resigned to the fact that Russian forces won’t be dislodged anytime soon from the 20 percent of Ukraine it now occupies, Zelensky said that “we will never recognize these territories as Russian.”
“This is not the question of a compromise or non-compromise,” he added. “There can be no compromise in the sovereignty of the state.”
Zelensky once again complained about a lack of support from allies, saying it was “insufficient for us to push Putin fully out of our territories. However, through a combination of military action and diplomacy, “we will bring back our land because we are right and we did not violate any aspect of international law and morally anyway, we are absolutely right in this situation.”
When asked by Morgan if he could sit down with Putin “given how you feel about him,” Zelensky answered that he would as part of a four-party negotiation involving the warring countries, the U.S. and European Union.
“If that is the only setup in which we can bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine and not lose people, definitely, we will go for this setup for the meeting with these four participants,” he said. “Does it matter what is my attitude to him? I will not be kind to him. And I believe that I considered him an enemy. And to be honest, I believe he considered me an enemy as well.”
Zelensky also broached the topic of nuclear weapons, rhetorically asking whether they would be provided to Ukraine.
“If the process of Ukraine joining NATO is taking a decade not because of us, but because of our partners, then we have a legitimate question: what will protect us from this evil?” he queried. “What support package, what missiles, will they give us nuclear weapons?”
The Ukrainian president touched on many other topics as well, which he mentioned Tuesday on X.
As the Trump administration debates its future approach to Ukraine, weapons shipments from the U.S. were temporarily paused, according to Reuters. That flow resumed over the weekend.
“Shipments restarted after the White House pulled back on its initial assessment to stop all aid to Ukraine,” the news outlet reported, citing two anonymous sources.
“There are factions inside the administration that are at odds over the extent to which the U.S. should continue to aid Kyiv’s war effort with weapons from U.S. stocks,” Reuters added.
The Ukrainian military has initiated a major organizational overhaul, creating an order of battle more akin to that used by NATO. The move involves about 50,000 troops or roughly 20% of those on the front lines.
The “sweeping reform” to replace the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) “often-haphazard regional command structure into a modern warfighting machine” was ordered by commanding general Oleksandr Syrsky on Monday,” the Kyiv Post reported on Tuesday. Syrsky announced that the Ukrainian army “will convert its frontline formations into corps-sized command groups built around some of the AFU’s most effective combat brigades.”
Initial orders for the restructuring had gone out and “a reported six corps headquarters would take over direct control of sectors of the front, and that each would be assigned five combat brigades, on paper giving each corps formation a front-line strength of 12-15,000 men and around 700-900 heavy weapons like tanks, armored personnel carriers or artillery,” according to the Kyiv Post.
In his evening television address, Zelensky said the deep changes to AFU headquarters structure and fighting unit chains of command would improve combat efficiency and make possible rotations of units to rear areas for rest and recuperation. Those troops are sometimes deployed to the fighting line for more than a year, the publication noted.
“A common and longstanding complaint by Ukrainian frontline commanders and troops is a three-year-old AFU policy of juggling hundreds of small units in and out of deployments along a 1,000-kilometer-long (621-mile-long) front, without a centralized local command,” the Kyiv Post explained.
A large motivation for the reorganization is that there is minimal replenishment of units from the training centers, according to Ukrainian Pravda (UP). The publication, citing a Ukrainian military source, added that this move is not related to potential negotiations or freeze of the front lines.
“He said the Ukrainian army would be able to carry out rotations in the face of a major war,” UP stated.
Ukraine is already using laser technologies to hit Russian targets, Col. Vadym Sukharevskyi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
“Laser technologies are already hitting certain objects at a certain altitude,” Sukharevskyi told the news outlet.
Ukraine’s laser system, called Tryzub, can down aircraft at altitudes exceeding 2 kilometers, Sukharevskyi claimed to RFE/RL.
“The Unmanned Systems Forces, established less than a year ago, already include combat and research units operating across air, land, and sea,” the Kyiv Independent noted.
The War Zone could not independently verify Sukharevskyi’s claims. As we have reported in the past, there are several challenges to weaponizing lasers, which you can read about in our deep dive here.
The Albashneft oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region was hit by a Ukrainian drone attack, setting the facility ablaze, according to the Security Service of Ukraine.
“This oil refinery and petroleum production plant is positioned as a ‘mini refinery’ and is involved in supplying gasoline and diesel to the Russian occupation army,” the SBU claimed on Facebook.
“Strikes on strategic objects involved in securing the armed aggression of Russia against Ukraine will continue,” SBU stated.
The attack was the latest in an ongoing Ukrainian campaign to strike at the Russian oil infrastructure in attempts to damage both its economy and ability to wage war. There have been nearly two dozen such attacks in recent months.
Video emerged on social media showing what appears to be a 1,000-pound winged JDAM-ER GPS-guided glide bomb being dropped by a Ukrainian Air Force Su-27 Flanker fighter.
As we have noted in the past, Ukraine was given the JDAM-ERs based on a 500-pound Mk 82 bomb body. This is the first known use of the weapon, which was first reported by The Aviationist.
We reached out to Boeing and USAFE for more details. Boeing declined comment and we have not heard back from USAFE.
Images emerged on social media of a Ukrainian signals intelligence collection post, where troops use radio receivers to scan for the electronic emissions of Russian drones. Networked together, these posts help triangulate the location of Russian reconnaissance drones to help guide Ukrainian first-person view drones (FPV) to intercept them.
There was an unconfirmed report that Western nations are now allowing Ukraine to use donated long-range weapons.
Military expert and Defense Express editor-in-chief Oleh Katkov told the Espresso TV outlet that restrictions on the use of Western weapons for deep strikes inside Russia have been lifted.
“The situation with the restrictions on using Western weapons for strikes on Russian territory has indeed changed for the better,” Katkov claimed. “Previously, we were completely prohibited from carrying out such strikes. Now, we are operating without restrictions not only in the Kursk region but across all of Russia.”
Katkov did not say which weapons systems, who lifted the restrictions, when they were lifted, or which regions of Russia are on the receiving end. We reached out to the Pentagon and White House National Security Council for confirmation and details and will update this story with any pertinent details provided.
You can read more about those donated weapons and how they were slowly delivered in our story here.
A 38-nation coalition – including all members of the European Union – on Tuesday announced “major progress” in their joint work to establish a special tribunal to judge the Russian leadership for the crime of aggression committed against Ukraine.
“The work among experts and lawyers has so far centered on drafting the legal statute that will underpin the tribunal and determine its jurisdiction,” Euro News reported. “The statute is not yet final but the coalition hopes it could be endorsed before the end of the year.”
Late last month, Sweden announced its biggest aid package to Ukraine to date, worth more than $1.2 billion.
“This package will also strengthen Ukraine’s long-range capability,” the Swedish government announced. “Sweden aims to donate about 1 billion SEK (about $90 million) towards making Ukraine able to produce long-distance missiles and drones. It also includes a doubling of the previous 16 donated Combat Boat 90s (CB 90) and anti-tank weapons, as well as investments to support Ukraine’s defense industry.”
A U.S. Air Force (USAF) RC-135 V/W Rivet Joint surveillance jet reportedly flew over the Black Sea for the first time since Feb. 22, 2022, two days before Russia launched its full-on invasion. According to a flight-tracking website, the jet took off from RAF Mildenhall and flew about 200 miles southeast of Ukraine, doing several orbits over the Black Sea between occupied Crimea and Turkey.
Those orbits would allow the spy plane to gather information about Russian radar and communications over all of Crimea and parts of Kherson Oblast and southeastern Russia, X user @MeNMyRC1 whose bio includes being a former Rivet Joint crewmember, told us.
“The orbit over the Black Sea gives them much more range than they had flying solely over Romania,” said @MeNMyRC1.
While this was reportedly the first USAF Rivet Joint flight over the Black Sea in nearly three years, jets operated by the U.K. Royal Air Force have flown over the body of water since. In September 2022, the pilot of a Russian Su-27 Flanker fired a missile in the vicinity of a U.K. Rivet Joint. You can read much more about that encounter here.
We reached out to USAFE for confirmation and more details.
This was not the only Rivet Joint flight of recent note. Earlier this week, these aircraft were spotted flying off the Mexico coast on an unprecedented mission, which you can read more about here.
Ukraine is using 155-mm M712 Copperhead laser-guided munitions, according to Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov. The shells were recently used in an attack on Russian concrete shelters in Golaya Prystan, a town in the “temporarily occupied left bank of Kherson region,” Butusov wrote on Telegram.
A video of a rarely seen French-donated NG Crotale short-range air defense (SHORAD) system emerged on social media. The system, particularly useful against low-flying missiles and manned and unmanned aircraft, is now operational with Ukraine’s 38th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment.
A Russian medic who has deserted from the Russian army and is seeking asylum in France has given a vivid account of the grim conditions on the Russian front line in Ukraine, the brutality of the Russian commanders, and the threats faced by Russian troops.
Alexey Zhilyaev, 40, from Murino near St Petersburg, deserted from the Russian army in August 2024 after nine months of service as a medic. He fled Russia with the aid of a dissident group and is now in France, where he is seeking political asylum.
Interviewed by Radio Free Europe, Zhilyaev claimed that he had trained as a medic as a student. He was inspired to join the army by seeing “crowds of people without arms and legs, on crutches and in wheelchairs, getting off the train” in St Petersburg. He raised a lot of other concerns about the Russian war effort, including its troops being sent into battle in so-called meat waves, a lack of effective electronic warfare equipment, and the predominance of Ukrainian drones. You can read more in the following X thread.
Speaking of drones, a Russian milbogger, using The cat is on the line Telegram channel, offered a bleak assessment of his country’s drone efforts.
“We (Russians) have a general problem with organizing any proactive combat work on specific tasks on a systematic basis,” said the milblogger. “A sad systematicity is observed in the practice of poorly organized attacks, which, due to some misunderstanding, are considered offensive actions.”
Another big problem is that Ukraine has a large advantage in the number of drones on the battlefield.
“It seems to me, even in the current realities of a shortage of material and human resources, it would actually be possible, albeit limited, to fight for the ‘lower sky,’” the milblogger stated. “We will not objectively be able to crush the enemy’s FPVs with ramming strikes of our own FPVs now simply due to the quantitative UAV advantage of the enemy (which, by the way, once again emphasizes the critical importance of quantitative indicators, which we must strive to ensure). But we are still able to attack Ukr. recon, ISR and bomber drones…”
You can read more in the following X thread.
At least four people were killed and 17 wounded by a Russian missile attack on the Kharkiv region city of Izyum, according to the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine.
“The number of victims may increase,” Moshe Azman said on X. “We pray for the wounded!”
German-donated IRIS-T air defense systems have been a boon to defending Ukrainian skies. New video emerged of the systems in action, showing effectors taking out several Russian aerial threats, including Shahed drones. Ukraine has received two types of IRIS-T-based systems from Germany. The IRIS-T SLS is for short-range protection while the IRIS-T SLM is for medium-range. Both fire variants of the IRIS-T missile were originally designed for air-to-air applications. Germany’s Diehl Defense makes the IRIS-T. Ukraine has received six SLMs and five SLSs.
The intensity of fighting in Russia’s Kursk region is captured in the following video by Russian troops. Nearly 25 minutes long, it shows those troops coming under fire from Ukrainian drones and artillery as they move through the remnants of an unnamed town.
The hellscape of what’s left of the Toretsk region was captured in the following video, which shows a Ukrainian tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle blasting Russian targets and ground troops conducting house-to-house combat in the rubble.
A squad of about a dozen Russian troops dismounted from a BTR-82 armored vehicle that stopped after charging forward with its main gun blazing. It is unclear why the vehicle stopped, but Ukrainian drones were loitering overhead. As you can see from the following video, many of those soldiers were hit by drone-dropped munitions.
After surviving an initial mine blast, Russian troops riding a quad bike were not so lucky during the next encounter. They ran over another mine and were blown up.
A Ukrainian drone was seen in a recently posted video lowering down on a Russian drone, grabbing it, and taking it away. The scene recalls the venerable arcade game where players lower a claw into a pit of plush toys hoping to pull one out.
You can see a Ukrainian Mi-17 Hip helicopter intercepting and shooting down a Russian Shahed drone in the following video. The Hip was one of about a score of former Afghan Air Force Mi-17s turned over to Ukraine in May 2022 as Excess Defense Articles. The aircraft still sports the Afghan Air Force livery.
And finally, “a Russian conscript from the Chelyabinsk region, Alexander Erlich, single-handedly disabled a Russian Su-25SM3 attack aircraft at an airfield in occupied Simferopol,” Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov claimed on Telegram. “Erlich, without a driver’s license, got behind the wheel of a KAMAZ, exceeded the speed limit and rammed a Russian aircraft.”
The incident caused about $3 million worth of damage, Butusov claimed.
A Russian court sentenced Erlich to a one-year suspended sentence with an 18-month probation, according to the Crimean Wind Telegram channel.
“It would be good to immediately find him and present him for an award,” Butusov joked.
That’s it for now.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com