And yet, the Tankies assured me that rare earths were the "real" reason the US was supporting Ukraine all along.
God their reads on situations are horseshit.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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There are no minable deposits of rare earths anywhere. That's why they're called rare earth elements. Nowhere on Earth are there geologic processes that concentrate them into ores. The only way to get them is to process absolutely enormous volumes of dirt, at great expense in terms of energy used and pollution created.
Every country has them.
Who sells it is a question of which country is willing to render some portion of their territory uninhabitable for the foreseeable future, while also making a larger portion of their territory sick and dirty.
They heard “mined” and thought that had something to do with digging up ore
Source?
The Trump administration is entirely transactional. They will not do anything for anyone unless they are getting something back in exchange. However, it is also very performative. Trump cares more about the optics of a deal than the deal itself. How many times have you heard Trump talk about his own or someone else's "ratings"? He's not talking about any objective metric, he is talking about popularity.
So, it entirely makes sense that his aim was to publicly humiliate Zelenskiy and force him into a "deal" with lots of "value" coming back to the US. As long as the press can report a high number in the deal, the terms of the deal are not important. Trump could care less whether the deal was for minerals, or anything else. He cares more about the headlines that the deal would bring then the terms of the deal itself.
And since it's quite likely that he is aligned wih Russia, making a deal that is difficult to technically deliver on with Ukraine may be purposeful. It would give him cover at some point to complain "Ukraine isn't living up to the terms of this deal", because the terms may be unattainable. However, I don't think Trump thinks that far ahead, he's only concerned with today's headlines. He may be getting coached on that by his Russian friends on how to appease domestic critics while putting Ukraine in a lose-lose situation.
The Trump administration is entirely transactional.
Trump will make all transactions illegal, because he can't let trans people have actions.
It took us so many years to get trans fats out of the food supply when our lord and savior, Cheetos supreme would have done it with a snap of his fingers
It's never been about rare earth minerals. It's always been about food production.
The European Commission reports that Ukraine accounts for approximately 10% of the global wheat market, 15% of the corn market, and 13% of the barley market. Moreover, the country has earned the distinction of being the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil, with a staggering 50% of global exports. Additionally, Ukraine ranks third in barley production, fourth in maize production, and fifth in wheat production. In 2021 alone, Ukraine exported cereals worth close to $12 billion, further solidifying its prominence in the global food market. Source
If Ukraine’s depleted agricultural GDP has been a boon to Russia, the rising global food insecurity that has resulted from Russia’s war has also been beneficial: Ukraine’s diminished exports have created openings for Russia, another major global agricultural exporter, to make up for Ukraine’s losses, with Russia using its agricultural exports as a source of soft power. In early 2022, Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, declared food to be Russia’s “silent weapon.” Source
I can’t believe that anybody in Washington actually believes that it makes sense to get rare earths in Ukraine.
In at least one conference, Trump repeatedly referred to them as “raw earths.” He just doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. I sort of assume that Putin is at the root of his sudden obsession with raw earths, but who knows. But he doesn’t even really “believe” things in the reality-connected way that you or I would use the term.
Because Putin doesn't give a flying duck for anything east of Moscow, Russia is a major producer of some rare earths.
I guess this is probably a strategy to say: "hey, Russia is selling us double of what Ukraine promised."
President Felon is not a business man, he's a con man and a bully. This was about a public excuse to dump Ukraine in putins lap, nothing more.
people have already forgotten that trump was already going to leave nato last time he was in power and would have if he'd won instead of biden. which essentially forced putin to invade at the worst possible time for them or risk waiting until 2026 for another opportunity assuming trump would even win again.
Side note: what is the "proper" Ukranian way to transliterate Зеленський? I've seen "sky", "skiy", and "skyy" in the media. I note Wikipedia uses "skyy". I know that there may not be a single direct transliteration, but perhaps Ukranians prefer one particular transliteration over another?
His Twitter account is ZelenskyyUA, two "y"s, so that's probably what he prefers for English contexts.
From my understanding there is not really one correct way too transliterate from Cyrillic to Latin script. Its more about making it sense phonetically.
Zelensky or Zelenskyy would both be correct
If that is true, why didn’t Zelenskyy just sign it? Honestly asking.
Because he didn't come here to sign it, he came to force Trump make his position clear to the world. He stayed calm, he thanked Trump plenty, he didn't rise to the insults... He even printed out big pictures to hand to trump one at a time, they way he likes
He kissed the ring so he could make Ukraine's position clear - they don't trust Russia's word, they have no doubt Russia will break any deal made without security guarantees, with good reason. They offered the trump white house investment opportunities to see if that would realign the US with Ukraine, but even if we were to cripple our future with the numbers Trump responded with, he'll still give Russia everything Putin wants
He was the only adult in that room, and he wanted the world to see it. He made the US position clear (Trump's position at least) - this isn't a negotiation tactic or an an effort to get concessions, Trump supports Putin over America's allies
And it worked. The EU immediately met when he returned, they announced deals for like 1.5 trillion over the next couple years to set up their own military production, and they're preparing troops to mobilize
I think it's a trap. Zelenskiy knows that the rare earths are difficult to mine profitably. If he had signed it, it would just give Trump cover to claim that Ukraine was not holding up its end of the deal in a few years, and withdraw from whatever agreement was made.
Zelenskiy knows it's only a matter of time before US support for Ukraine goes away. His job is to push whatever levers he has to keep the support flowing for as long as possible, while arranging more support from Europe.
"A few years from now" is longer than "last week", so if that was his goal he didn't do a great job.
Or maybe as the leader of a sovereign country he wasn't willing to sign a deal where he gave something and got nothing in return (security guarantees).
I could see the whole thing being about withdrawing support from Ukraine because the "deal" fell through. Maybe it was always a means to get to where we are now, with the US no longer supplying information and weapons to Ukraine.