DISINFO: The EU is looting Ukraine
SUMMARY
The EU supports Ukraine because it urgently needs raw materials like lithium, hydrogen, and others, otherwise their plans for renewable energy collapse. The EU even officially admits it, they exposed the whole programme called ASTRABAT.
RESPONSE
A recurrent pro-Kremlin narrative claiming that the EU urgently needs the raw material from Ukraine and is plundering it.
The ASTRABAT programme is a research project to design an innovative high-energy and safe, solid-state lithium-ion battery cell for the electric vehicle market and beyond. It aims at developing new technologies, not 'looting' raw material.
Moreover, lithium reserves in Ukraine are significant but not unique and the country is not the largest reserve in the world. There are four proven deposits in central Ukraine in the Kirovohrad region, and in Eastern Ukraine in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk region. The deposit in the Donetsk region, as well as the one in the Kirovohrad region, are under Russian control, so it cannot be claimed that the EU plunders Ukrainian lithium.
Hydrogen cannot be considered as a raw material as it is usually obtained by processing hydrocarbon products or the hydrolysis of water. It is abundant and is not a strategic material.
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