In February 2025, as Ukraine faced its third year of war against Russia, U.S. President Donald Trump made headlines by demanding that Ukraine hand over a share of its natural resources in return for continued American support. The proposed arrangement was eye-catching not just for its tone but for its underlying assumptions. Looking to recoup the costs of U.S. assistance, Trump asked for the equivalent of $500 billion from Ukraine’s war-battered resource base, focusing on high-demand minerals that are key to modern defense and tech industries. Zelensky said he would not recognize such a large sum since it vastly outweighed the $100 billion the U.S. had sent to Ukraine under former President Joe Biden. Signing the deal, in his words, would mean “10 generations of Ukrainians” paying back the debt. Yet, the deal remains on the table, and the terms are bold: Ukraine would commit 50% of all future revenues from newly developed natural resources to a joint U.S.-Ukrainian investment fund for reconstruction, echoing Ukraine’s environmental exploitation under the USSR.
Following World War II, the Marshall Plan used $13.3 billion in U.S. funds—roughly $171 billion today—to rebuild war-torn Western Europe from 1948 to late 1951. The American initiative focused on economic development, reaping the benefits of European democratic stability and financial success. The current mineral deal has been instead likened to the Treaty of Versailles, the post-World War I reparations paid by Germany, but in today’s case, the financial burden falls not on the aggressor but the invaded. The deal’s transactional nature highlights a deeper tension: the current American administration views Ukraine less as an ally to aid and more as a resource to exploit. Ukraine will be rebuilt not just as a sovereign democracy but as a strategic site of extraction and environmental exploitation. What role should the environment—and its protection—play in this process?
Industrial Legacy and Environmental Burden
To understand Ukraine’s mineral allure, we must revisit its industrial roots. During the Soviet era, Ukraine was a central cog in the USSR’s heavy industrial machine. It supplied coal from the Donbas, iron from Kryvyi Rih, and uranium from central Ukraine. Under Stalin’s rule, Ukraine became the site for many of the Soviet’s biggest dams, highways, government complexes, factories, mines, oil refineries, chemical plants, ships, and space rocket facilities. This came at a massive environmental cost. Pollution from smelting plants, the Chernobyl disaster, tailings from uranium mines, and unchecked chemical production left many regions ecologically degraded, especially in the country’s east.
After independence in 1991, Ukraine’s industrial economy struggled to transition. Outdated infrastructure, lack of investment, and oligarchic control slowed the shift to a service economy and continued the trend of large-scale de-development. But the resource wealth remained, and in recent years—especially with rising geopolitical tensions—Western governments and companies began considering Ukraine’s untapped potential in critical raw materials, including lithium, titanium, graphite, and rare earths.4 Some estimates suggest the country holds at least $10 trillion worth of natural resources, though many geologists cast doubt on the figures, and the commercial viability of these reserves is still uncertain.
Ecocide as a Weapon of War
While attention has focused on the minerals beneath Ukraine’s soil, another environmental crisis has been unfolding on the surface. Since 2022, Russian military tactics have inflicted deep ecological damage. The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023 displaced tens of thousands, flooded critical farmland territories in Ukraine’s south, and irreversibly changed aquatic life across the Dnipro River basin. Russian shelling has also hit chemical plants, fuel depots, and water treatment facilities, spreading pollutants and creating no-go zones of toxic debris.
These acts have sparked calls to recognize ecocide—the deliberate or negligent destruction of ecosystems—as an international crime. In early 2024, Pacific Island nations, including Vanuatu and Tuvalu, formally proposed that ecocide be added to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Legal scholars argue that the environmental devastation in Ukraine is not collateral damage but a deliberate tactic of war—a way to destabilize communities and make regions unlivable. Historical comparisons can also help put the current situation in a larger context. The term “ecocide” was coined in 1970 by Professor Arthur W. Galston, a Yale biologist, specifically in response to the Vietnam War. The U.S. military used Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant and herbicide, to destroy forests and crop fields—a strategy with devastating long-term effects on health and biodiversity. In Cambodia, warfare during the 1970s led to widespread deforestation, as combatants cleared jungles and mined rivers. These cases, like Ukraine’s today, show how warfare often weaponizes the environment, erasing landscapes and livelihoods alike.
Compared to other sectors, the U.S. invested virtually no funds directly in environmental protection in Ukraine, with the majority of funds coming from USAID and subsequently put in question after Trump’s executive order around the USAID cuts.
Minerals and the Politics of Extraction
Against this backdrop, the focus on rare earths takes on a more fraught character. Ukraine’s reserves—while promising—come with caveats. Minerals like graphite and lithium require heavy upfront investment and technical expertise to process. Rare earths, in particular, are notoriously difficult to extract without causing radioactive or chemical pollution. At present, much of the global processing capacity lies in China, raising both economic and geopolitical challenges for any country seeking alternatives.
The Trump-backed proposal envisions using Ukraine’s resource base as both a revenue generator and a geopolitical anchor. Under the recently reworked draft agreement, Washington would receive all profits from the joint investment fund until Ukraine had repaid the full value of U.S. wartime assistance, plus an additional 4 percent in annual interest. The United States would also gain preferential control over future projects, including a right of first offer on new initiatives and the authority to block the sale of Ukrainian resources to third parties. For the first year of the agreement, Ukraine would be barred from offering more favorable investment terms to any country other than the U.S. Should Ukraine, already facing a reconstruction bill of over $500 billion, be expected to finance its recovery by opening its land, water, and air to further environmental stress?
Critics argue that this setup prioritizes short-term extraction over long-term sovereignty. Unlike the Marshall Plan, which offered grants, the proposed resource-sharing agreement is effectively a loan against Ukraine’s future. Without robust environmental regulations, Ukraine risks repeating the pattern seen in other resource-rich post-conflict nations: wealth exits the country, leaving pollution and instability in its wake.
Rethinking Postwar Recovery: Environmental Justice and Collaboration
What would a different model look like—one grounded not in extraction but in environmental justice? For one, Ukraine could be supported in building domestic processing capacity for its resources, ensuring that value is added locally and environmental standards are enforced. Instead of simply exporting raw minerals, Ukraine could develop clean-tech infrastructure, including battery factories and solar component production, aligned with EU green goals. International partners, especially the U.S. and EU, have a role to play. Investments could be tied not to revenue-sharing quotas but to technology transfer, environmental safeguards, and community-driven planning. As with Japan’s and South Korea’s post-WWII recovery, success lies in building capacity, not just extracting capital.
Furthermore, Ukraine’s postwar legal strategy could integrate ecocide claims into its broader diplomatic push. By framing environmental destruction as a war crime, Ukraine could lead global efforts to establish new legal norms—ones that protect ecosystems as fundamental to peace. This approach would not only hold Russia accountable but also position Ukraine as a thought leader on climate, law, and post-conflict recovery.
More Than Minerals
Trump’s rare earths proposal may be headline-grabbing, but it is symptomatic of a larger trend: treating Ukraine as a trove of commodities to be monetized rather than a nation in need of restorative, just recovery. The war has damaged not only Ukraine’s cities and economy but also its forests, rivers, and soil. If rebuilding efforts fail to account for this ecological trauma—and if deals are made without sufficient safeguards—then postwar Ukraine will find itself trading one form of vulnerability for another.
Rather than viewing natural resources as the price of aid, Ukraine and its allies should treat them as shared responsibilities. Whether in legal forums, diplomatic arenas, or industrial partnerships, the priority should be not just to extract but to repair—to build a future that values clean air, healthy soil, and resilient communities as much as GDP or defense contracts. In this way, Ukraine’s recovery can become not just a geopolitical transaction but a model for environmental solidarity in the age of conflict.
Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Ukrainian Flags, Image source from AFUO | CC License, no changes made