President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the Victory Plan to the Ukrainian parliament on October 16, outlining five key points for bolstering military assistance and boosting economic recovery in the country. In particular, the fourth point focused on developing strategic economic potential through safeguarding Ukraine’s critical raw materials (CRMs), joint investment, and utilizing relevant potential.

The president highlighted Ukraine’s vast resource potential, which holds global significance in energy and food production. It is also a key target for Russia’s aggression in the ongoing war. Zelensky states that Ukraine has a significant amount of natural resources, including critical metals, valued at trillions of US dollars. Graphite, uranium, titanium, lithium, and other strategically essential resources can be a powerful asset in the global competition, either bolstering Russia and its allies or as a significant factor for Ukraine and the rest of the democratic world.

Volodymyr Zelensky also highlighted the importance of critical raw materials available in Ukraine, which presents, on the one hand, potential for economic growth within the country and, on the other hand, a means of strengthening the European Union for the sake of Europe’s economic and security independence. Additionally, he emphasized the opportunity for the United States and G7 partners to collaborate with Ukraine as an ally and benefit from a profitable return on investment.

The BGV group of companies, led by its founder, Gennadii Butkevych, welcomes the president’s decision to address the issue of critical raw materials (CRMs) in Ukraine’s Victory Plan. For ten years, the BGV Group Management team has worked to advance the industry and invest in extracting critical minerals and metals with the aim of making Ukraine a leader among global suppliers of both CRMs and value-added products, competing with Russia and China.  BGV Group holds five licenses for extracting strategic minerals, one of the company’s main areas of activity today. The company has invested over $100 million in Ukrainian mining projects in nearly ten years, choosing graphite, rare metals, and rare earth elements as priority areas. Specifically, as part of the BGV Graphite project, the company validated the reserves of its graphite deposit in accordance with international standards and completed a preliminary economic assessment (PEA), a pre-feasibility study (PFS), and pilot tests to produce final products, namely graphite concentrate and spherical purified graphite (SPG), and has also begun the design phase.

Collaboration with Ukraine, specifically with BGV Group Management, offers Europe and the United States a valuable strategic partnership for extracting and processing essential raw materials. This could lead to advancements in various fields such as medicine, automotive engineering, computer technology, the production of laser and navigation devices, telecommunications, and the space industry. Additionally, this partnership could also facilitate the transition to renewable “green” energy.