Uncertainty looms over mineral deal to be signed between Ukraine and US
- 26 February, 14:00
Ukraine and US will sign a rare earth minerals deal in White House, US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday, stressing that the deal would not provide any security guarantees for Kyiv. Trump described the deal to be signed on Friday as a "very big agreement".
The signing of the deal would enable Washington to regain through a joint fund hundreds of billions of dollars it spent on military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-fledged invasion of the country four years ago. Trump said the deal would help American taxpayers "get their money back". Under the deal, the joint fund would receive revenues from mining of rare earth minerals and metals as well as some oil and gas revenues in Ukraine. According to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, the preliminary agreement envisages that an "investment fund" would be set up for Ukraine's reconstruction.
"We've been able to make a deal where we're going to get our money back, and we're going to get a lot of money in the future," Trump announced during a cabinet meeting on Thursday. “The most importantly by far, we're going to make a deal with Russia and Ukraine to stop killing people,” Trump went on saying, adding that Russia would have to make concessions.
The announcement of the deal followed days of intense negotiations in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he wanted the US to guarantee Ukraine’s security amid Russia’s aggression. Zelenskiy resisted pressure from the US to sign the draft deal at Munich Security Conference earlier in February. “I will not sign what 10 generations of Ukrainians will have to pay back,” he said at a news conference on Sunday.
Uncertainties loom over the deal. Compounding these concerns is Trump’s refusal to give security guarantees to Ukraine as part of the deal. “ I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re going to have Europe do that,” Trump said during te cabinet meeting. “We’re gonna make sure everything goes well. As you know… we’ll be partnering with Ukraine in terms of rare earth. We very much need rare earth. They have great rare earth,” he said, adding that the US “doesn’t have much of it here.”
Trump went on saying that the US presence alone via the mineral deal would equate to an “automatic guarantee” since “nobody’s going to mess around with our people when we’re there.”
The key details of the mineral agreement has not been made public yet, although Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Wednesday Ukraine and the US had finalised a version of the deal.
