Ukraine's largest coal producer, Metinvest BV, announced that it would suspend its operations at Pischane near Pokrovsk in Donbass. Russian troops have also partially conquered the village of Shevchenko, which has significant lithium reserves.
In recent days, the Russians have advanced several kilometers towards the town of Pokrovsk in Donbass, whose suburbs are now only 3 kilometers from the front line. It is a key logistics center for Ukrainians, while the town, which had 60,000 inhabitants before the war, is crossed by several roads, as well as a railway line. The Russians are trying to envelop Pokrovsk from the west along the Solona River and have captured at least partially the town of Shevchenko to the south of the city. However, the next village is that of Pischane, which has several mining installations linked to coal exploitation.
Already, the company Metinvest BV, the largest in the sector in Ukraine, announced Thursday, December 12 in a press release that it was suspending the activities of its production center in Pischane due to “the intensification of bombings and the rapprochement of the front line”. Staff members and their families were evacuated from the “vertical mine shaft no. 3” as well as “administrative complex”specifies the group. This site alone supplies half of the volume of coal produced by Metinvest BV. “It is the largest mine in Ukraine and one of the first in Europe”specifies the daily Kyiv Independent.
Coal, but also lithium
The suspension of activity at this mine could have serious consequences for Ukraine's economy, particularly on steel production, essential to the war economy, but also on exports, mainly to the European Union. . “All Ukrainian metallurgy which uses blast furnaces depends on this coal”writes Dennis Sakva, analyst at the kyiv-based investment bank Dragon Capital, interviewed by Bloomberg. Ukraine's steel production fell to 6.2 million tonnes last year, from more than 21 million tonnes before the Russian invasion.
But that's not all: the village of Shevchenko, already partly under the Russian flag according to several sources, has significant reserves of lithium. From the start of the invasion, launched on February 24, 2022, the Russians seized another lithium deposit, at Kruta Balka, further south.
Also read
Faced with Russian pressure, the Ukrainians are giving up more and more ground in southern Donbass
White gold is one of the rare metals, the price of which has surged in recent years as it has become an essential component of batteries manufactured for electric vehicles. Shortly before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Svitlana Vasylenko and Uliana Naumenko, researchers at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, published a study in which they estimated that “Ukraine had a great chance of becoming one of the main producers of lithium in the world”knowing that these reserves were notably located in Donbass, two-thirds of which is today occupied by Russia.
The two scientists concretely estimated that Ukrainian reserves could amount to 500,000 tonnes, more than what Portugal has, which currently has the largest deposits in Europe. To date, however, Ukrainian lithium has not yet been mined. More broadly, the magazine Foreign Policyin 2022, estimated that Ukraine had “commercially exploitable deposits of 117 of the 120 most used industrial minerals in more than 8,700 explored deposits».
