No. 01 · US–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund · Part two
The fund takes 50% of subsoil revenue from new licences. Before that number means anything, someone has to establish what it attaches to. Nobody had.
0.85%
Ukraine's whole subsoil rent line as a share of budget revenue, May 2026
89.5%
Of extractive payments came from oil and gas — all outside the perimeter
0
Tonnes of lithium or rare earths Ukraine produces commercially
Rent payment for subsoil use came to UAH 2.7 billion in May 2026 — 0.85% of general fund revenues, and 44.8% below plan. Vox Ukraine attributes the shortfall to strikes on extraction infrastructure and to capacity sitting in occupied territory.
That is the whole subsoil rent line: every hydrocarbon and mineral licence in the country, new and old. The agreement's claim attaches to a subset of it, and the subset is the part that has not been developed yet.
Extractive payments to the state budget by sector, 2020
SOURCE: EITI NATIONAL REPORT OF UKRAINE 2020 · SECTOR SPLIT IS OF TOTAL EXTRACTIVE PAYMENTS, NOT THE ROYALTY LINE ALONE
The Ukraine Agreed Revenue covers licences issued on or after the effective date, plus pre-existing licences not industrially exploited. Run Ukraine's actual production through that test and the result is stark.
Lithium deposits by grade and control
SOURCE: UKRAINE STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY · KYIV INDEPENDENT
Gas, iron ore, manganese, titanium and uranium all produce — and all sit outside the claim. Lithium and rare earths, which carry the entire political narrative, produce nothing at all.
What follows from that
The USGS minerals yearbook records no commercial lithium production in Ukraine and no rare-earth output. Everything Ukraine actually earns subsoil revenue from today sits outside the agreement's perimeter.
This follows arithmetically rather than politically, and it reframes the deal in both directions. The claim is not on half of Ukraine's mineral revenue. It is on half of revenue from deposits yet to be developed, in a country at war, on a timeline nobody has published.
On 12 January 2026 Ukraine awarded the Dobra lithium deposit under a production sharing agreement to Dobra Lithium Holdings, a JV of TechMet and The Rock Holdings. Minimum commitment USD 179 million — but only USD 12 million is firm, for exploration and a reserve audit. The remaining USD 167 million is contingent on confirming commercially viable reserves.
The US Limited Partner in the fund is the US International Development Finance Corporation. TechMet, half of the JV that won the first PSA inside the fund's perimeter, is partially owned by the DFC.
That is a structural fact drawn from public documents, not an allegation. But the same US agency sits on both sides of the first transaction the fund will draw revenue from, and nothing in the published framework addresses how that is managed.
In current cash terms the concession is small. Legacy gas, iron ore, manganese and titanium all sit outside the perimeter and remain fully Ukraine's. The state retains ownership under the PSA model, and the agreement carries no near-term fiscal cost. Against a wartime budget where subsoil rent is under one percent of revenue, this is a cheap instrument for attracting capital that would otherwise not come.
The concession is small precisely because it is entirely forward-looking. Ukraine assigned half the state's gross take on every deposit it has not yet developed, in perpetuity, with no termination right and no arbitral forum — in exchange for contributions the public text does not specify, to a partner that accrues equity automatically from military aid it was already providing.
Which reading is right turns on three numbers that are not public: the assessed valuation basis under Art. VI §5, the distribution waterfall in the LP Agreement, and the state's production share under the Dobra PSA — which the Cabinet's own announcement omitted.
Until those exist, the correct output is a range and an explicit statement of what would collapse it.
SOURCES: VOX UKRAINE BUDGET BAROMETER MAY 2026 · EITI NATIONAL REPORT OF UKRAINE 2020 · USGS MINERALS YEARBOOK · S&P GLOBAL. PRODUCTION FIGURES ARE 2021 VINTAGE AND ESTABLISH COMPOSITION, NOT CURRENT LEVEL.