Russia 'pleases' Trump: It is willing to give the US its 'rare earths' that Ukraine denied it

Russia is ready to cooperate with Washington on developing rare earth elements that the United States needs , the Kremlin said amid the broadest thaw in relations since Donald Trump took office.

“The Americans need rare earths, we have a lot of them,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday, according to the Interfax news agency. “ This opens up quite broad prospects for cooperation .”

Russia raised the idea of ​​cooperating on mineral development after Kiev objected to US demands for a $500 billion fund as part of a broader deal to give Washington a share of Ukraine 's mineral revenues.

Trump has repeatedly said the United States is particularly interested in Ukraine's rare earths, even though the country does not have large reserves that are internationally recognized as economically viable.

“We certainly have much more such resources than Ukraine , and I want to stress this, much more,” Putin said in an interview with state media published online Monday evening.

“Russia is one of the undisputed leaders in reserves of these rare metals and rare earths,” he said, adding that any deal with the United States could include minerals from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine .

Russia has one of the world's largest reserves of rare earths, but the country is lagging in terms of production, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. On Monday, Putin urged the government to speed up mining.

Putin also offered to supply 2 million tonnes of aluminium to the US if import restrictions are lifted and suggested Russian companies could consider a joint venture for the light metal in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.

He did not provide further details on his offer, which came about two weeks after Trump ordered a 25 percent tariff on all U.S. aluminum imports.

The country is the world's largest aluminum producer after China. Russia was once a major supplier to the United States, but shipments virtually stopped after the U.S. imposed a 200 percent tariff on the country's aluminum in 2023.

Even before that, Russia had not supplied more than a million tons of aluminum to the United States in recent years.