>>20151146This is why eastern Ukraine is so valuable -- to Ukraine, to Russia, to the West, and to the world.
>kraine harbors some of the world’s largest reserves of titanium and iron ore, fields of untapped lithium and massive deposits of coal. Collectively, they are worth tens of trillions of dollars.Tens of trillions of dollars of mineral wealth lie under the Donestk, Luhansk, and the Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts or provinces.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/10/ukraine-russia-energy-mineral-wealth/Ukraine would probably be permanently ruined without those resources, so the fight for the east is an existential fight for them. It's why a "negotiated settlement with some territorial loss" doesn't fly with them, and it may also be part of why Russia isn't giving up either.
Also, Ukraine's most populated provinces are in the east, and that's where the country's skilled labor human capital is. Russia needs to add to its declining population. Even in Imperial and Soviet times, the Donets Basin produced the large majority of both thermal and coking coal for the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. But there is also lithium, titanium, and many more goodies under the soil there.
This is part of why I am so drawn to this place -- it fascinates me in many ways: geologically, geographically, historically, politically, economically, culturally etc.
I will probably take the job in Alabama just because my parents remain alive and I help them out sometimes, but someday I wish to go to the Donbas: the most interesting coal and mineral basin in the world, in my book.
