US and Ukraine conclude first critical minerals fund transaction

The joint US-Ukrainian Recovery Investment Fund has concluded its first deal in the critical minerals sector. About $30 million will be directed to a joint investment platform with Ukraine's BGV Group, which will finance early-stage mining projects in Ukraine.

This was reported by Reuters citing the head of investments at the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), Conor Coleman.

The platform will initially focus on projects related to rare earth elements, uranium, beryllium, and zirconium. All these raw materials are on the US list of critical minerals.

BGV Group Management was founded by Hennadiy Butkevych, co-owner of the ATB chain. The company is already developing graphite, beryllium, uranium, zirconium, and rare earth element projects in Ukraine. According to BGV itself, over the past ten years the group has invested more than $125 million in the mining sector.

Back in spring, the company submitted documents on one of its critical raw material projects to the US-Ukrainian fund for possible financing.

The first minerals deal became part of a series of new investments by the fund. According to Coleman, the total value of projects in its portfolio now stands at about $70 million.

The fund is simultaneously supporting projects aimed at enhancing the resilience of Ukraine's energy system ahead of the upcoming heating season. One of them involves electricity storage systems.

The DFC previously approved financing for DTEK's project on operating battery energy storage systems with a total capacity of 200 MW and an energy capacity of 400 MWh. The facilities can provide electricity to about 600,000 households for two hours.

According to DFC, the systems are located at six sites and use technology from American company Fluence. They are intended, among other things, for frequency stabilization and grid balancing after damage and sudden load changes.

The fund will also acquire a stake in a combined heat and power generation platform. It should develop a network of decentralized energy hubs that can restore electricity and heat supply after Russian attacks on large infrastructure facilities.

Since its inception, the US-Ukrainian fund has concluded six investment agreements. Its first investment in March was in Ukraine's Sine Engineering, a communications and navigation technology maker. Now the fund has for the first time directly entered the critical minerals sector, which was initially one of the key areas of the agreement between Kyiv and Washington.

The Recovery Investment Fund was created under the Ukraine-US minerals agreement signed in April 2025. It is intended to invest in critical minerals, energy, infrastructure, telecommunications, high technology, and other strategic sectors.

For Kyiv, the fund is seen as a tool to reduce investment risks and attract private foreign capital to projects that would be much harder to finance solely through the commercial market amid war.

The DFC also stated that it is seeking additional capital to expand the fund's capabilities and increase the number of projects in Ukraine.