Russian and United States authorities have actually begun discussions on developing reserves of rare earth metals in Russia, President Vladimir Putins unique envoy for worldwide financial and investment cooperationsaid Monday.Rare earth metals are an important location for cooperation, and we have actually started conversations about different uncommon earth metals and projects in Russia, Kirill Dmitriev told the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia.Dmitriev, who heads Russias Direct Investment Fund, said a number of business had expressed interest in joint projects however did not offer further details.Putin said last month that Moscow was open to dealing with Washington on developing reserves of unusual earth metals, consisting of in regions Russia declares to have annexed since launching the full-blown intrusion of Ukraine.At the time, the Kremlin leader said American and Russian business were currently in touch and talking about joint economic jobs connected to efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine.United States President Donald Trump has actually been pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to give United States services special access to Ukrainian uncommon earth minerals while trying to broker a Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire.On Sunday, Trump accused Zelensky of attempting to back out of the unusual earth offer while threatening Russia with secondary tariffs on companies handling Russian oil in response to Putins need that Zelensky be gotten rid of from office as part of the peace process.Putin has actually claimed that Russia is a world leader in unusual earth minerals, with even more reserves than Ukraine.
Other estimates rank Russia 5th internationally in unusual earth reserves.According to figures from Russias Natural Resources Ministry cited by Izvestia, the country holds an estimated 658 million metric tons of rare metals, including 28.5 million lots of unusual earth metals.However, Russia presently produces just 1% of the worlds unusual metals and has minimal processing capabilities.