16 February, 18:21
Zelensky’s decree extending sanctions against Dmytro Firtash is not a finale. It opens a new round in a years-long contest over strategic raw materials — one that sits at the intersection of two geopolitical transformations unfolding simultaneously: the purging of post-Soviet assets from Kremlin financing, and the reshaping of global critical minerals supply chains in favour of the West.
Firtash’s business model had a straightforward architecture: subsidised gas from Gazprom, cheap credit from Gazprombank — and a factory generating profit from those state-subsidised inputs. In 2014, Reuters calculated that through artificially depressed gas prices, Firtash’s companies pocketed over $3 billion on deals with the Russian monopoly. The credit leverage from Gazprombank reached $11 billion.
The titanium business grew on the same foundations. Firtash acquired deposits in the Zhytomyr and Dnipropetrovsk regions during the same period in which he controlled Turkmen gas transit to Europe through RosUkrEnergo — a joint venture with Gazprom. This was no coincidence. Resource diversification on gas windfall profits was standard practice among oligarchs whom Moscow permitted access to rent flows.
After 2014, that model began to crack. After 2022, it collapsed. Three titanium processing plants were frozen. The licence to the Malyshevskoye deposit was run through a convoluted sale scheme: in June 2024, barely twenty-four hours before a new NSDC sanctions decision took effect, the permit was transferred to LLC Tiberius Plus, controlled by Oleksiy Shestyuk. The Supreme Court unwound the scheme in April 2025. But by November, the Dnipropetrovsk District Administrative Court suspended the State Geology Service’s cancellation order — again, at Tiberius Plus’s request.
The legal battle over the deposits has lasted more than four years. Every cancellation has been met with a court challenge.
Three Deposits, Three Trajectories
The Mezhyrichne deposit in Zhytomyr Oblast holds reserves of up to 4 million tonnes of ilmenite ore, with production capacity of roughly 120,000 tonnes of concentrate per year and an estimated operating horizon of ten to twenty years. The Mezhyrichensky processing plant resumed operations in September 2024 — legally, sanctions against the owner did not halt the enterprise’s work.
The Valky-Hatskivske deposit, also in Zhytomyr Oblast, holds 2 to 3 million tonnes and annual output of around 65,000 tonnes. It was here, in 2021, that the NSDC first cancelled the licence held by LLC Valky-Ilmenite. The associated Stremyhorodske deposit was included in July 2025 on a list of sites eligible for production-sharing agreement tenders.
The Malyshevskoye deposit in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast is the most strategically significant: a complex zircon-rutile-ilmenite placer with reserves sufficient for twenty to forty years of extraction. It became the arena for the longest legal battle and the licence-transfer scheme. The 2004 permit, valid until 2034, has been retained by Firtash’s structures through successive favourable rulings at different judicial levels.
The American Vector: DFC, TechMet, and the Minerals Agreement
The context for understanding who will ultimately receive these assets was not set by the NSDC or the State Geology Service. It was set by the US-Ukraine minerals agreement signed on 30 April 2025. The agreement grants the DFC — the US International Development Finance Corporation — the status of a preferred partner with the right to negotiate offtake agreements on all new critical minerals projects. Titanium is explicitly listed among the covered resources.
The DFC is already physically present in Ukraine. In September 2025, an American delegation toured titanium and zirconium deposits in the Kirovohrad region operated by Velta — a Ukrainian producer that currently accounts for roughly 2 percent of global titanium supply and is in active discussions with the DFC over financing for a $142.5 million vertically integrated cluster project.
TechMet, a Dublin-based fund with the DFC among its shareholders and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund among its backers, has explicitly stated its interest in Ukrainian titanium. CEO Brian Menell described Ukraine as offering “a fabulously enhanced opportunity to deploy capital.” The fund reopened its fundraising round in late 2025 at what Menell called “a significantly higher number.” A TechMet representative, Volodymyr Ignashchenko, is already actively marketing Ukrainian assets to potential partners, a fact confirmed by Elfie Kent, director of Camarco (APCO), who described Ignashchenko as an “adviser to TechMet and a consortium of investors examining critical minerals opportunities in Ukraine.”
DuPont, the second named potential bidder, has sector-specific reasons for interest: the American chemical corporation has previously used titanium feedstock from the Orion state enterprise to manufacture titanium dioxide pigment. For DuPont, the deposits matter primarily in the chemical rather than metallurgical dimension.
European Lithium Steps Aside
Mykhailo Zhernov, director of CRML whose majority shareholder is European Lithium, closed the question of participation in the Firtash asset auctions with one sentence: “Velta has sufficient resources for a long-term perspective.” Following the acquisition of Velta Holding from Brodsky, the company’s resource base is considered adequate — no expansion in the titanium sector is planned.
This removes one competitor from the field, strengthening the position of the TechMet / DFC-aligned consortium further.
The Legal Minefield
The minerals agreement and the NSDC sanctions decisions form a logical vertical: sanctions remove licences, licences go to auction, auction conditions embed DFC’s right to preferential offtake negotiations. But this vertical functions only on the condition that courts do not suspend the cancellations.
The practice has been otherwise. The Malyshevskoye case demonstrates that transferring a licence to a shell structure twenty-four hours before sanctions take effect is sufficient legal grounds for an appeal. The new Zelensky decree explicitly extended restrictions to Tiberius Plus in order to close that loophole. Yet the Dnipropetrovsk court ruling of November 2025 shows the loophole remains open.
As long as the deposits are caught in legal limbo, they cannot be the subject of a transparent auction. This implies either a prolonged legal struggle with an uncertain outcome, or administrative pressure on the judiciary — which contradicts the very premise of the “transparent auctions” Svyrydenko continues to describe.
The Geopolitical Dimension
Before the full-scale invasion, Russia supplied approximately one-third of US titanium semi-finished imports. That supply chain broke in 2022. Washington has been systematically seeking alternatives.
Ukraine ranks seventh globally in ilmenite production and is the world’s third-largest producer of rutile at 15.7 percent of total output. Scandium — a by-product of titanium ore processing — is among the strategic priorities of both the EU and NATO. This is not simply a mining investment. It is a restructuring of the supply chain for the defence and aerospace industries.
This is precisely why the 30 April agreement does not merely offer American capital a seat at the auction table. It grants the DFC a privileged negotiating position on offtake — before anyone else sits down. Firtash is exiting not only because the NSDC decided so. He is exiting because those who intend to take his place have already been identified at a higher geopolitical level.
What Comes Next
Three scenarios carry different probabilities. In the first, court suspensions continue, deposits remain in legal limbo for another one to two years, no transparent auctions materialise, and potential investors — including TechMet — wait or redirect capital to more liquid opportunities.
In the second, the new sanctions package definitively closes off Tiberius Plus and associated structures, courts confirm the cancellations, and auctions proceed before the end of 2026. TechMet’s DFC-backed consortium acquires the Malyshevskoye deposit; the Zhytomyr sites go to other bidders.
In the third, Group DF pursues international arbitration, citing $250 million in invested capital. That road is long and expensive for all parties.
Svyrydenko’s statements about “transparent auctions” describe the desired scenario. Between a sanctions decree and the actual transfer of assets lies at least one more cycle of legal challenges — fought by parties who understand the rules of this game very well indeed.