This story is pretty weak. What they apparently have are a bunch of anomalies from extremely coarse geophysical surveys. Aerial surveys even! That's about four

This story is pretty weak. What they apparently have are a bunch of anomalies from extremely coarse geophysical surveys. Aerial surveys even! That's about four steps from having deposits, in the same way that having a bunch of startup ideas is about four steps away from an exit. Each of those steps results in major winnowing. The next logical phase of exploration would be having geologists hiking and driving around on these prospects to try to understand the specific geology of each. If things look good then maybe a program of surface level geophysical surveys, which are far more precise than aerial surveys (though still pretty fuzzy). Finally some (very expensive) exploratory drilling, then a lot more drilling to establish with some certainty the size of the deposit. Now you have a mineable property. By the way, at every step you need a bunch of skilled people on location who currently have plenty of work opportunities in non-war zones. Sure, there are almost certainly good mines to be found since it's a huge country and mineral exploration has been on hold for thirty years and was pretty spotty before then. But saying that aerial geophysics surveys confirm this is pretty funny. EDIT: It looks like some ground geophysical surveys have been done as well. But no drilling as far as I can tell from the story.