Is Ukraine a gold mine for the west?
There has recently been heightened tension between Ukraine and Russia which the western media has helped to inflame by making all sorts of allusion of an impending war between the two nations. Surprisingly Russia has denied this claim of an imminent invasion of Ukraine and sees no reason for this reckless action to occur.
If that was to be the case then Ukraine would have done some nasty thing to Russia to warrant their invasion in order to eliminate the national security threat posed to Russia by there continued existence as a nation.
America and United kingdom have also contributed to the heightened tension by their continued insistence that their intelligence assessment points to an imminent invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Making such callous and inflamatory statements does not help the cause of Ukraine, neither does it help to douse the tensions. What a true friend of Ukraine will do in order to help them is to intensify silent diplomacy with Russia in order to calm the situation or eliminate the threat entirely. By indiscriminately making inflammatory statements such as they have been doing will contribute to the destabilization of Ukraine which will cause great damage to their already weakened economy due to the over eight years of war with insurgents in the Donbas region backed by Russia which have already lead to the loss of over 14,000 Ukrainian both military and civilians (source: https://tass.com/world/1289095)
Some school of thoughts view this western intrusion as having an ulterior motive intended to cajole the Ukraine government into buying some merchandise from the west.
Ukraine is noted to be extremely rich in mineral resources. The country has abundant reserves of coal, iron ore, natural gas, manganese, salt, oil, graphite, sulfur, kaolin, titanium, nickel, magnesium, timber, and mercury.
Ukraine is known to be amongst the largest producers of the following minerals:
Iron Ore : Ranked 7th place in the world in iron extraction: 39 M tonnes and 2.4% of global output (after Australia, China, Brazil, India, Russia and RSA)
Manganese : Ranked 8th place in the world in manganese extraction: 651 thousand tonnes and 3.6% of global output (after RSA, Australia, China, Gabon, Brazil, Ghana and India)
Titanum : Ranked 6th place in the world in titanium extraction: 431 thousand tonnes and 6.3% of global output (after China, RSA, Australia, Canada і Mozambique)
Gallium : Ranked 2nd place in the world in gallium extraction: 9 tonnes and 2.9% of global output (after China)
Germanium : Ranked 5th place in the world in germanium extraction: 1 tonne and 1% of global output (after China, Russia, USA and Japan)
Kaoline : Ranked 6th place in the world in kaolins extraction: 2,4 M tonnes and 5,9% of global output (after China, USA, Germany, India and Czech Republic)
Zirconium : Ranked 10th place in the world in zirconium silicate extraction: 26 thousand tonnes and 1,9% of global output (after Australia, RSA, China, Mozambique, Senegal, USA, Kenya, India and Indonesia)
Graphite : Ranked 8th place in the world in graphite extraction: 13 thousand tonnes and 1.3% of global output (after China, Brazil, North Korea, India, Russia, Canada and Madagascar)
Power Plant Coal : Ranked 13th place in the world in power plant coal extraction: 18,9 M tonnes and 0,4% of global output (after China, India, USA, Indonesia, Australia, RSA, Russia, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Vietnam and Canada)
Coking Coal : Ranked 12th place in the world in coking coal extraction: 5,2 M tonnes and 0,5% of global output (after China, Australia, Russia, USA, India, Canada, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Mozambique and Colombia)
Uranium : Ranked 10th place in the world in uranium extraction: 1 tonne and 1,4% of global output (after Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, Uzbekistan, Russia, China and USA)
(Source: https://ukraineinvest.gov.ua/industries/mining/)
There is no doubt that Ukraine is endowed with vast array of rich minerals which makes the country very attractive and of interest to many western governments similar to what is obtained in some African countries.
Despite Vladimir Putins avowed ambition of reconstituting the Soviet Union he is a man who makes his calculations very well before venturing into risky military adventures.
Ukraine is a huge country and not of the small size of Crimea which they annexed in 2014. Ukraine will be turned into a grave yard if Russia attempts to run it over. Also they will be creating an enduring hostility with the citizens of Ukraine which will be counter productive to his ambition of bringing them into the ambit of Russia.
Russia will rather prefer to annex Ukraine on a more friendly terms through inducement of it's citizens with the promise of better economy and life style rather than by brute force.
I do not anticipate that any invasion of Ukraine is in the offing. The most likely scenario is to make an incursion into eastern Ukraine where the war has been raging on since 2014 with the Russian backed separatist in order to have a decisive victory and bring the war to an end. Anything outside that will be a suicide mission for Russia which president Putin will not want to put his country through being a man that has demonstrated the possession of canny and apt judgement in situations such as this.
Let's help Ukranian's to return back to normal life by reducing the echo of war and promote resolution of their differences with Russia through diplomacy and understanding.
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