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Donald Trump has said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is likely to visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal to pay for US military aid to defend against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The announcement followed days of tense negotiations between the US and Ukraine in which Zelenskyy alleged the US was pressuring him to sign a deal worth more than $500bn that would force “10 generations” of Ukrainians to pay it back.
Media outlets reported late on Tuesday that the terms of an agreement had been reached.
“I hear that he’s coming on Friday,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Certainly it’s OK with me if he’d like to. And he would like to sign it together with me. And I understand that’s a big deal, very big deal.”
According to the Financial Times, which first reported the deal, the new terms of the deal did not include the onerous demands for a right to $500bn in potential revenue from exploiting the resources, which include rare earth metals and Ukrainian oil and gas resources.
A framework for the deal included joint ownership of a fund to develop Ukraine’s mineral resources with certain caveats for those resources already contributing to the state budget.
It was more favourable to Ukraine than the original deal proposed by Washington, but did not include references to long-term security guarantees that Kyiv wanted to receive in the deal.
Certain details of the deal remained unclear, including the US’s ownership stake in the new fund.
Asked what Ukraine would receive in the deal, Trump said: “$350bn, military equipment and the right to fight on.”
“We’ve pretty much negotiated our deal on earth and various other things,” Trump added. “We’ll be looking … general security for Ukraine later on. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. There are a lot of people that want to do it, and I spoke with Russia about it. They didn’t seem to have a problem with it. So I think they understand they’re not going back. And once we do this, they’re not going back.”
Neither the US nor Ukrainian governments immediately responded to requests for comment from the Guardian on the terms of the deal.
The initial US proposal, which included a 100% financial interest in the fund to which revenues from the natural resource extraction would flow, had provoked outrage in Ukraine and other allies in Europe. “I am not signing something that 10 generations of Ukrainians will have to repay,” Zelenskyy said of the initial proposal. The negotiations were accompanied by a public war of words in which Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections”, a common Kremlin talking point.
The resources the US is seeking in Ukraine include key components for batteries, titanium production, and rare earth metals that are used in electronics, wind turbines, weapons and other modern products.
Ukrainian officials had said earlier this week that the deal was nearing completion.
“Ukrainian and US teams are in the final stages of negotiations regarding the minerals agreement,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, said on Monday. “The negotiations have been very constructive, with nearly all key details finalised. We are committed to completing this swiftly to proceed with its signature. We hope both US and UA [Ukrainian] leaders might sign and endorse it in Washington the soonest to showcase our commitment for decades to come.”
As the US and Ukraine neared an agreement, Russian president Vladimir Putin had also proposed a deal to develop Russia’s mineral resources, including in the Ukrainian territories under Russian occupation. Putin said Russia “undoubtedly [has], I want to emphasise, significantly more resources of this kind than Ukraine”.
