The US-Ukraine Reconstruction and Investment Fund has signed its first agreement in the critical minerals sector. Thirty million dollars will go toward a joint investment platform with BGV Group, a company founded by billionaire Hennadiy Butkevych, co-owner of the ATB supermarket chain. The announcement came on October 2 from Conor Coleman, head of the investment division at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), in an interview with Reuters.
The targeted deposits include rare earths, uranium, beryllium, and zirconium — all resources featured on the United States’ official critical minerals list. Coleman stated that the deal “aligns very well with the administration’s priorities.” The initial phase covers early-stage mining projects spread across Ukrainian territory. The fund’s overall portfolio has already reached approximately $70 million across five active projects.
The fund was established under the intergovernmental minerals agreement signed by Washington and Kyiv in April 2025, at the initiative of President Donald Trump. It operates across five strategic areas: subsoil resources, the defense-industrial complex, energy, logistics, and infrastructure. Ukraine will contribute 50% of revenues from new projects into the joint fund, with the option to offset part of that contribution against US military aid already received. For the first ten years, fund profits will be reinvested in Ukraine rather than distributed.
The BGV Group deal is not the fund’s only move. Two of the other approved projects aim to bolster Ukraine’s electricity and heat generation capacity ahead of winter, under mounting pressure from Russian strikes on energy infrastructure. One of these complements a nearly $100 million credit line that the DFC has already approved for energy company DTEK, earmarked for deploying battery storage systems to provide backup power for up to 600,000 households.
Ukraine holds reserves of at least 22 of the 50 critical raw materials on the US list, including some of the world’s most significant deposits of graphite, uranium, titanium, and lithium — resources that remain largely untapped due to the ongoing conflict and incomplete geological data. This first operational agreement signals that the mechanism launched in the spring is now fully up and running. If the platform with BGV Group delivers the expected results, it could pave the way for far larger investments, consolidating the American foothold in strategic raw material supply chains and reducing dependence on non-Western suppliers — particularly for uranium, a resource of growing centrality in the global expansion of nuclear energy.
