Washington and Kyiv are still negotiating their rare earths agreement. But what do Ukrainians who live near potential mines think of it all?
In Polokhivske it’s as if time has stood still. Only a handful of people live here, its houses are abandoned and decrepit, stubbled fields as far as the eye can see. Things are no different in neighboring Kopanki, where nearly every house has been abandoned. The few people who live here tell DW that only one child was born in the village in 2024.
“I started working here in 1976,” says Volodymyr, a Kopanki retiree. “I was the four-hundredth worker in the collective and now there probably aren’t 100 people living here in the village. We only have funerals anymore, never any weddings, things aren’t like they used to be.”
People left Kopanki because there was no more work. These days, the bus only stops twice a week. It’s pretty unlikely that US President Donald Trump has ever heard of Polokhivske or Kopanki. Nevertheless, the president is probably keenly interested in the villages — or more specifically, what lies beneath them. Here, in central Ukraine, lies the country’s largest lithium reserve.
For the rest of this article: https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-whats-up-with-europes-largest-lithium-deposits/a-72221692