All wars are wars for resources and for central bankers

Editor's note: Would western corporate access to Ukrainian lithium be a contributing factor to war in Ukraine? There are estimated reserves of more than 500,000 tons of lithium in Ukraine. The western charge is that Russia "invaded Ukraine" to control and get access to these lithium reserves. A charge that doesn't seem to be substantiated since Russia's military went into eastern Ukraine. Mass digitalisation and energy transition is creating shortages for some raw materials like lithium and that is why China also wants access to lithium in Ukraine. Many sources forecast that the market for strategic minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt will all increase fourfold between 2021 and 2040. Get ready for more resource wars as Ukraine's mineral deposits are estimated to be around $12.4 trillion. Western media sources accuse Russia of "plundering Ukraine's resources", but if that is the case what are BlackRock and Vanguard doing in Ukraine if not planning for similar pillaging? Imagine telling the families of the roughly 400,000 dead, missing and seriously injured Ukrainian soldiers they were butchered for control over rare earths?
________

Source: RM

Ukraine: All Lithium Reserves and Mineral resources In War Zone

by Simone Fant | April 1, 2022

Geologists call it the Ukrainian shield. That land in the middle which starts from the northern border with Belarus up to the shores of the Azov Sea, in the south of Donbass. According to the studies of the Ukrainian geological service, in the ancient rocks of this shield are hidden lithium deposits with great potential. Findings that have been identified mainly around the area of Mariupol, the port city of Donbass torn apart by Russian bombing.

Lithium deposits

Lithium deposits in Ukraine

"This may not be the main reason for the invasion, but undoubtedly Ukraine's mineral wealth is one of 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 as last year, before the Russian invasion halted exploration. Last November, in fact, the Australian company 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 same month, the Chinese company Chengxin Lithium has also asked for the rights on some deposits, a move 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 under Russian 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 not recognized 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 the Khoroshiv-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 and strategic research, identifying several areas with lithium minerals such as spodumene with very high potential. "The very ancient rocks that lithium producers are interested in are pegmatites containing spodumene (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 the greatest potential for extracting lithium in all of Europe.

Please go to RM to continue reading.

_______

More:

The war in Ukraine and the fight over raw materials

It's almost like calling the war in Ukraine a "clean energy war":

Lithium: The Link Between the Ukraine War and the Clean Energy Transition

Central banks order Japan to drop $4.5 billion more into Ukraine:

Japan plans to allocate $4.5 billion to Ukraine

Don't underestimate Ukraine's resources. Are these resources including titanium, lithium, cobalt, germanium, gallium, iron, manganese and other rare earths worth going to war over?

Are Ukraine's vast natural resources a real reason behind Russia's invasion?

Ukraine was poised to become an important rare earths exporter. Then came the invasion 

Alright, did these NATO countries backed by their respective corporations want access to Ukraine's vast resources?

Tragic And 100% Predictable: "I Believe That If We Hadn't Pushed To Bring Ukraine Into NATO, That Ukraine Would Be Intact Today, That There Would be No War."

Let the resource wars begin:

Shots Across the Bow in the Black Sea, the Red Sea and the South China Sea