KipPotapych
Well-Known Member
One thing is certain: Trump is a liar. This is undeniable (at least to any reasonable person). Is he lying about the number here, being $350 or whatever it is he said? Probably. I am fairly certain he is. Is he far off in his “estimate”? Maybe or probably, rather. Does it matter though?
As for the actual numbers, the congress-approved aid to Ukraine since 2022 sits at $175B since last May. I posted this here previously and provided the sources. Not all of the money were actually “disbursed” yet though and some is allocated for future years and whether it will be provided or not is rather questionable at this point. This is not all the funds provided to Ukraine though. There is also some $15B or something like that was provided through the US foreign aid (different from the above provisions) in 2022 and something like $1.5B per annum over the past ten years before that. This is all that was publicly disclosed, I believe. Is there other money that went Ukraine way or towards Ukraine supporting activities? No doubt. All the supporting activities in Europe, for example, intel support, etc, are likely coming from a different budget and are accounted for in different books. Many other examples. But is it $350B or close? I personally doubt (though I do not see the relevance). I am not going to talk about what stayed in the US economy and what didn’t (some say as much as 90%, but that is nonsense because somewhere between 35 and 50% of the funds is economic aid). I will add, however, that these outgoing funds are also offset by the significant revenue the US has been receiving from the LNG sales to Europe, for one thing. And so on. They haven’t done that bad at all. Europe on the other hand, paid through the nose, including the money they spent on themselves, to support the economy via gas subsidies, etc. Over a trillion easy at this point (probably way over). I posted some data here previously, long ago now. Look at the state of the German economy, “leading the way” among others in Europe. So yeah, things are rather relative.
Now Trump talks about bringing back his “rare earths agreement”. I really do not understand where this nonsense is coming from. There are no viable “rare earths” in any significant amount in Ukraine that are worth mulling over. This is crazy talk. Here is handy and timely article to support my claim:
Behind the paywall, so I will quote the relevant parts.
What Ukraine has is scorched earth; what it doesn’t have is rare earths. Surprisingly, many people — not least, US President Donald Trump — seem convinced the country has a rich mineral endowment. It’s a folly.
It's not the first time that Washington has gotten its geology wrong in a war zone. Back in 2010, the US announced it had discovered $1 trillion of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including some crucial for electric-car batteries, like lithium. The Pentagon went as far as describing Afghanistan as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
All very important stuff, the kind of geo-economic shock that redraws the global political map. But it was, as many said then, and as everyone knows now, a complete fantasy. The same applies to Ukraine’s alleged riches.[…]
The hype about the Ukrainian rare earths began with Ukrainians themselves. Desperate to find a way to engage Trump, they miscalculated presenting the then-incoming president a “victory plan” in November that talked up — way, way up — the potential of the country’s mineral resources. Soon, they lost control of the narrative.[…]
Every document someone has pointed out to me regurgitates the same conspiracy-theory claims found on the blogosphere. They tend to mistake accumulations of some rare-earth-bearing minerals as equating with a commercial mine. Many highlight the Novopoltavske deposit, discovered by the Soviets in 1970, as a potential source. While tiny amounts of rare earths are present there, digging them out seems impossible — hence why the site remains an unproductive deposit rather than a mine more than 50 years after its discovery. The Ukrainian government has described Novopoltavske as “relatively difficult” to mine and said that any rare-earth yield would be “off balance,” meaning that it’s not economical to exploit them at current prices. Worse, the mineralogy goes against it: The host source is a mineral that makes extracting the elements very hard.
The worst of the pamphlets claiming Ukraine has a rare-earths cache bears the North Atlantic Treaty Organization imprint and has been widely shared as the “Trump-is-right” proof. It was produced in December 2024 by the NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence, based in Lithuania. Although affiliated with the military alliance, bearing its name and logo, the entity and its counterparts are autonomous bodies outside the command chain. The document is provocative: “Ukraine emerges as a key potential supplier of rare earth metals such as titanium, lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium…” The list should ring every alarm. Anyone with a passing knowledge of chemistry knows none of those minerals are rare earths.
So like I said in my previous post and before that: Ukraine does not have any economically feasible “rare earths”. I also started talking about and was going to expand further, but the author of the article above actually summed it up for me. Can one consider the global value of the rare earths production? If yes, then one should consider collecting $500B worth from Ukraine in this context.
At best, the value of all the world’s rare-earth production rounds to $15 billion a year — emphasis on “a year.” That’s equal to the value of just two days of global oil output. Even if Ukraine had gigantic deposits, they wouldn’t be that valuable in geo-economic terms.
Say that Ukraine was able, as if by magic, to produce 20% of the world’s rare earths. That would equal to about $3 billion annually. To reach the $500 billion mooted by Trump, the US would need to secure 150-plus years of Ukrainian output. Pure nonsense.
Pure nonsense indeed. What the hell they are all talking about, I have no idea. But maybe we do have some idea. Trump said:
"We're looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they're going to secure what we're giving them with their rare earths and other things."
“Other things” at the end is key there. Even then, collecting $500B from Ukraine fairly or otherwise (it is irrelevant) is a pipe dream that would never be a reality. That’s just impossible and completely crazy. But… hire a clown, expect a circus.
Imagine starting dealing with Russians tens or hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded men ago though and avoiding the circus…
I also find it weird that Zelensky says they cannot sustain the war without the US support. Euro politicians and military say the same. Most analyst say the same. Definitely not in the short to medium term. Yet, most of those on the couches say that the Americans should screw themselves and Ukrainians need to keep fighting.
Nothing is decided of course. Trump went from the next day to weeks to months and now within a year, as far ending the war is concerned. We shall see.
Also, not sure why people are surprised. He is doing what he said he would do. I understand people made up some stuff previously about how Trump was going to be great and fresh breath of air after Biden, will provide more weapons to Ukraine and remove the limitations on their use, and whatever other fantasies. Trump, however didn’t say any of that. He said they need to stop providing aid to Ukraine and so far it looks like that is where he is heading.
Not sure what is surprising about him trashing Zelensky either. He hates the guy. I talked about it before. He doesn’t like Ukraine either. More importantly, he doesn’t see it as something with enough weight to deal with and can be dealt about but without. He doesn’t deal with “little men”, he bullies them and forces them (basically tells them) to do what he thinks needs to be done and this is what everyone should expect. If the “little men” refuse, he fires them. He doesn’t give a you know what. I mean he sees the big Euro boys and gals as hardly anybody, if anybody at all, and someone thinks he is going to deal with Zelensky? Come on. He couldn’t care less and won’t deal with him. He will tell him what to do. The consequences we will observe.
As for the actual numbers, the congress-approved aid to Ukraine since 2022 sits at $175B since last May. I posted this here previously and provided the sources. Not all of the money were actually “disbursed” yet though and some is allocated for future years and whether it will be provided or not is rather questionable at this point. This is not all the funds provided to Ukraine though. There is also some $15B or something like that was provided through the US foreign aid (different from the above provisions) in 2022 and something like $1.5B per annum over the past ten years before that. This is all that was publicly disclosed, I believe. Is there other money that went Ukraine way or towards Ukraine supporting activities? No doubt. All the supporting activities in Europe, for example, intel support, etc, are likely coming from a different budget and are accounted for in different books. Many other examples. But is it $350B or close? I personally doubt (though I do not see the relevance). I am not going to talk about what stayed in the US economy and what didn’t (some say as much as 90%, but that is nonsense because somewhere between 35 and 50% of the funds is economic aid). I will add, however, that these outgoing funds are also offset by the significant revenue the US has been receiving from the LNG sales to Europe, for one thing. And so on. They haven’t done that bad at all. Europe on the other hand, paid through the nose, including the money they spent on themselves, to support the economy via gas subsidies, etc. Over a trillion easy at this point (probably way over). I posted some data here previously, long ago now. Look at the state of the German economy, “leading the way” among others in Europe. So yeah, things are rather relative.
Now Trump talks about bringing back his “rare earths agreement”. I really do not understand where this nonsense is coming from. There are no viable “rare earths” in any significant amount in Ukraine that are worth mulling over. This is crazy talk. Here is handy and timely article to support my claim:
Behind the paywall, so I will quote the relevant parts.
What Ukraine has is scorched earth; what it doesn’t have is rare earths. Surprisingly, many people — not least, US President Donald Trump — seem convinced the country has a rich mineral endowment. It’s a folly.
It's not the first time that Washington has gotten its geology wrong in a war zone. Back in 2010, the US announced it had discovered $1 trillion of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including some crucial for electric-car batteries, like lithium. The Pentagon went as far as describing Afghanistan as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
All very important stuff, the kind of geo-economic shock that redraws the global political map. But it was, as many said then, and as everyone knows now, a complete fantasy. The same applies to Ukraine’s alleged riches.[…]
The hype about the Ukrainian rare earths began with Ukrainians themselves. Desperate to find a way to engage Trump, they miscalculated presenting the then-incoming president a “victory plan” in November that talked up — way, way up — the potential of the country’s mineral resources. Soon, they lost control of the narrative.[…]
Every document someone has pointed out to me regurgitates the same conspiracy-theory claims found on the blogosphere. They tend to mistake accumulations of some rare-earth-bearing minerals as equating with a commercial mine. Many highlight the Novopoltavske deposit, discovered by the Soviets in 1970, as a potential source. While tiny amounts of rare earths are present there, digging them out seems impossible — hence why the site remains an unproductive deposit rather than a mine more than 50 years after its discovery. The Ukrainian government has described Novopoltavske as “relatively difficult” to mine and said that any rare-earth yield would be “off balance,” meaning that it’s not economical to exploit them at current prices. Worse, the mineralogy goes against it: The host source is a mineral that makes extracting the elements very hard.
The worst of the pamphlets claiming Ukraine has a rare-earths cache bears the North Atlantic Treaty Organization imprint and has been widely shared as the “Trump-is-right” proof. It was produced in December 2024 by the NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence, based in Lithuania. Although affiliated with the military alliance, bearing its name and logo, the entity and its counterparts are autonomous bodies outside the command chain. The document is provocative: “Ukraine emerges as a key potential supplier of rare earth metals such as titanium, lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium…” The list should ring every alarm. Anyone with a passing knowledge of chemistry knows none of those minerals are rare earths.
So like I said in my previous post and before that: Ukraine does not have any economically feasible “rare earths”. I also started talking about and was going to expand further, but the author of the article above actually summed it up for me. Can one consider the global value of the rare earths production? If yes, then one should consider collecting $500B worth from Ukraine in this context.
At best, the value of all the world’s rare-earth production rounds to $15 billion a year — emphasis on “a year.” That’s equal to the value of just two days of global oil output. Even if Ukraine had gigantic deposits, they wouldn’t be that valuable in geo-economic terms.
Say that Ukraine was able, as if by magic, to produce 20% of the world’s rare earths. That would equal to about $3 billion annually. To reach the $500 billion mooted by Trump, the US would need to secure 150-plus years of Ukrainian output. Pure nonsense.
Pure nonsense indeed. What the hell they are all talking about, I have no idea. But maybe we do have some idea. Trump said:
"We're looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they're going to secure what we're giving them with their rare earths and other things."
“Other things” at the end is key there. Even then, collecting $500B from Ukraine fairly or otherwise (it is irrelevant) is a pipe dream that would never be a reality. That’s just impossible and completely crazy. But… hire a clown, expect a circus.
Imagine starting dealing with Russians tens or hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded men ago though and avoiding the circus…
I also find it weird that Zelensky says they cannot sustain the war without the US support. Euro politicians and military say the same. Most analyst say the same. Definitely not in the short to medium term. Yet, most of those on the couches say that the Americans should screw themselves and Ukrainians need to keep fighting.
Nothing is decided of course. Trump went from the next day to weeks to months and now within a year, as far ending the war is concerned. We shall see.
Also, not sure why people are surprised. He is doing what he said he would do. I understand people made up some stuff previously about how Trump was going to be great and fresh breath of air after Biden, will provide more weapons to Ukraine and remove the limitations on their use, and whatever other fantasies. Trump, however didn’t say any of that. He said they need to stop providing aid to Ukraine and so far it looks like that is where he is heading.
Not sure what is surprising about him trashing Zelensky either. He hates the guy. I talked about it before. He doesn’t like Ukraine either. More importantly, he doesn’t see it as something with enough weight to deal with and can be dealt about but without. He doesn’t deal with “little men”, he bullies them and forces them (basically tells them) to do what he thinks needs to be done and this is what everyone should expect. If the “little men” refuse, he fires them. He doesn’t give a you know what. I mean he sees the big Euro boys and gals as hardly anybody, if anybody at all, and someone thinks he is going to deal with Zelensky? Come on. He couldn’t care less and won’t deal with him. He will tell him what to do. The consequences we will observe.
