MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia had lots of rare earth metal deposits and that it was open to doing deals to develop them after President Vladimir Putin held out the possibility of such collaboration with the United States.
“The Americans need rare earth metals. We have a lot of them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“We have our own plans to develop strategic resources, but there are quite broad prospects for cooperation here,” he told reporters.
Putin told state TV on Monday that Russia was open to joint projects with American partners – including government and the private sector – under a future Russia-U.S. economic deal.
U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged that “major economic development transactions with Russia” would take place.
Peskov said there was still a lot of work to be done to normalise relations between Moscow and Washington before any economic deals could be struck.
“Next on the agenda is the issue of resolving the Ukrainian crisis”, said Peskov. “And then, especially since the Americans themselves have also spoken about it, it will be time to consider possible projects related to trade, economic and investment cooperation.”
“When there comes, let’s say, a moment of political will, we will be open to this (cooperation on rare earth metals),” Peskov added.
Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion for electric vehicles, cell phones, missile systems, and other electronics.
Russia has the world’s fifth-largest reserves of rare earth metals, according to the U.S. Geological Survey data, after China, Brazil, India and Australia.
The U.S. and Ukraine are negotiating a separate deal involving rare earth metals. Trump said this week that deal was “pretty close” to conclusion. Putin on Monday said those negotiations were not a concern for Russia.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
