Invaders start mining manganese in Ukraine at one of world's largest deposits - media

Russians have started illegal manganese mining in the temporarily occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia Region. It is one of the world's largest deposits, Velykotokmatske, which is several times larger than the reserves of russian deposits.

A russian company from Rostec's orbit will be plundering Ukrainian subsoil, and it started geological exploration in April.

Russian propaganda media recently boasted that the russian company Real Engineering Invest will illegally develop the Velykotokmatske manganese deposit in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia Region. The occupying power issued a mining license to this company in February this year.

In April, Real Engineering Invest started geological exploration.

The Moscow Times links the company to Rostec, a russian state-owned company founded by russian dictator vladimir putin and headed by his close associate Sergei Chemezov. Through its subsidiary, Rostec owns 25.1% of Real Engineering Invest.

The appetites and impatience of the occupiers are understandable: the Velykotokmatske deposit is one of the top 5 manganese deposits in the world in terms of reserves: they are estimated at 1.7 billion tons. And this is many times more than russia has.

"It (the deposit - Ed.) is much larger than the largest in Russia, the Usinskoye deposit in the Kemerovo Oblast (127.7 million tons) and the Porozhinskoye deposit in the Krasnoyarsk Oblast (29.46 million). At the same time, only one deposit in Bashkiria is commercially producing manganese in Russia. The country buys more than 90% of this metal, which is used to improve the properties of steel, abroad," The Moscow Times writes.

The invaders have already calculated that they will be able to extract up to 1.7 million tons of manganese per year from the Ukrainian deposit in the TOT, while russia needs 1.3 million tons. They have begun to build a mining and processing plant for 3,000 employees near the deposit.

Propagandists also dreamed that they would steal Ukrainian mineral resources from this deposit for a hundred years.

"Before that, the head of the occupation administration of the Zaporizhzhia Region, Yevhen Balytskyi, announced plans to start developing the Velykotokmakske deposit. He noted that Rostec needs ferromanganese, which is forced to buy it in South Africa, Brazil and Gabon," the newspaper adds.