Posted on 04 Dec 2025
Government-backed market-making mechanisms would be essential for the West to counter China’s dominance of critical minerals supply chains, according to Ukraine’s deputy economy minister, Yegor Perelygin.
This is the “logic” Ukraine is using to position itself as a “future hub” for critical minerals, the minister says during the Resourcing Tomorrow conference, attended by Kallanish in London on Tuesday.
“Competing with China on the cost curve or competing with Indonesia, for example, for nickel… would be a pretty much impossible task, because you're facing a very, very difficult set of challenges,” he says. “The only way to really do that and really get the onshoring process running, and especially the friendshoring process running… you need guaranteed offtakes, you need price floors, you need government stimulation of the sector, and you need to do something about the energy prices. This is critical.”
“Somebody has to take responsibility to make this happen, because the Northvolt bankruptcy in Sweden showed us one simple thing: we cannot compete,” the minister adds. “We're getting beaten at our own capitalist game. And this is a big problem.”
More government initiative is needed to compete with China, Perelygin points out, adding that one of the “best ways” for this is to use an investment or a reconstruction fund mechanism. This, he says, can facilitate offtakes, equity investments, and even serve as a “political risk and sovereign risk stability mechanism.”
The minister’s comments follow the agreement that Ukraine and the US reached earlier this year to establish the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. Under the deal, the two nations will partner to develop Ukraine’s natural resources, including critical minerals, to support its recovery after the ongoing war with Russia. Perelygin is a member of the fund’s board.
“We see that the best tool for policy making is getting quasi-governmental or government to private capital partnerships that can facilitate these kind of deals with guaranteed margins, with price floors and with a good economy with long-term offtake contracts,” the minister concludes.
Perelygin highlights US rare earths producer MP Materials’ public-private partnership with the US Department of War (previously the Department of Defense) as one example of this. Under the 10-year deal, the department has established a price floor commitment of $110/kilogram for neodymium praseodymium (NdPr) products.
Source:Kallanish
