section_path: Background/Economic aspects
section_name: Economic aspects
paragraph_text: Economic aspects
  
  Economic interests were also a motive for Russia's attack on Ukraine and its annexation of the southeast. Control of lithium deposits in the Donbas and Ukraine's grain wealth would give Russia a "monopoly on the world market". In 2022, Russian General Vladimir Ovchinsky confirmed that the "Russian special operation" aimed to seize Ukrainian lithium deposits.
  
  The US government estimates that Russia's economic losses from the war and Western sanctions will amount to around $1.3 trillion by 2025, and Russia's direct financial spending on the invasion is estimated at $250 billion (as of late 2024) – costs that Russia could not have foreseen. According to a study published in mid-2022 by Canadian think tank SecDev, Russia seized energy reserves, metals and minerals worth at least $12.4 trillion in the Donbas, including 41 coal fields (63 percent of Ukraine's coal reserves), 27 natural gas fields, 9 oil fields, 6 iron ore deposits, two titanium ore deposits, a strontium deposit, a uranium deposit, a gold deposit and a large limestone quarry. The total value of raw material stocks in Ukraine is estimated at over $26 trillion. The value of lithium and rare earths in Ukraine is estimated at $11.5 trillion. In January 2024, the Russian occupation government in Donetsk Oblast granted the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources permission to mine lithium in the Shevchenko deposit near Kurakhovo, which is estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of US dollars.
  
  The Russian elite, especially Russian generals, had invested assets and property in Ukraine for money laundering purposes before the invasion.