The war in Ukraine isn’t about minerals but Russia’s push to regain power, former Deputy Minister for European Integration of Ukraine Sergiy Petukhov says.
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00:00Yeah, I'm going to talk to you a bit more about those in just a moment, but since you
00:03mentioned minerals and rare earths, I was going to ask you about that later, but do
00:07you think that history is going to look back on this Russian invasion of Ukraine and the
00:11war that your country's been through these last three years as having essentially been
00:16a war over these commodities, these rare earth materials? Do you think that's what this was
00:22all about from the beginning?
00:25Not really. Honestly speaking, I mean, we don't have anything that is very lucrative
00:29or exclusive. The coal deposits that we've been having and exploring for the last several
00:35decades are now depleted and are too costly to explore. The other minerals are not to
00:43the extent that make them exclusive or extraordinary or lucrative. So this whole discussion about
00:50the minerals in Ukraine is really, I think, taking away the focus from the things that
00:55are important. And I think for Russia, it's not about minerals as such, rather about controlling
01:02more of a territory within Europe, sending a signal to Europe that Russia is back to
01:07the times where they want to control what's going on on the European continent.