Russian troops have taken control of a lithium deposit considered one of the largest in Europe, located on the outskirts of the town of Shevchenkoin Donetsk. The information, released by the military correspondent Boris Rozhin through his Telegram channel, is based on Ukrainian documents detailing the characteristics of the deposit and its strategic potential.
The site, located in the Velikonovoselkovsky district, It covers an area of 39.84 hectares and its exploitation is projected to last for 20 years.. According to the cited documents, the deposit houses six pegmatite bodies that contain a high concentration of lithium, with a 90% ore associated with minerals such as spodumene and, to a lesser extent, petalite.
In addition to lithium, the deposit also contains other fundamental elements for the technology industry. “There is not only lithium here, which has become the ‘energy blood’ of the century of electric vehicles, renewable energy and energy storage, but there are also a whole range of other important elements: rubidium, cesium, tantalum, niobium, beryllium…“explains Rozhin.
A legacy of the Soviet era
The deposit was discovered in 1982 during a deep geological mapping program carried out in Soviet times. According to the documents, the deposit’s lithium reserves are classified as “potentially commercial” under the United Nations Framework Classification (UNSC-2009), although its development would require a more exhaustive evaluation.
Information on the total volume of reserves is restricted accesswhich has generated interest among international corporationsparticularly American and European: “That’s what all the American and European corporations wanted to grab for free. In fact, the Shevchensk lithium deposit is just one part of a huge deposit of lithium-bearing rocks, which extends towards northwest, along both banks of the Dnieper and towards Belarus.”
