A minerals agreement negotiated in recent days would open Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth to the United States.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Friday to sign a minerals deal as Kyiv seeks to regain American support in the Russia-Ukraine war.
It is the first meeting between the two leaders since Trump re-took office in January.
Trump and Zelenskyy have clashed over broader efforts to settle the ongoing Ukraine conflict.
The Ukrainian president met with a bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators earlier on Friday.
Trump has changed Washington’s approach to the conflict since taking office last month, shifting from the previous administration’s stance of not engaging with the Kremlin to opening peace talks with Moscow.
Trump has said he wants to quickly wind down the war, improve relations with Russia, and recoup U.S. money spent on supporting Ukraine.
Under former President Joe Biden’s leadership, the United States supplied more than $174 billion in Ukraine-related aid and vocal backing on the world stage.
Under the previous administration, Zelenskyy received billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. weaponry and vocal backing on the world stage.
Trump has since urged Europe to take a more active role in supporting Ukraine and spend more of its own money on national defense rather than relying on U.S. support.
Trump has also urged Europe to spend more of its own money on national defense rather than relying on U.S. support.
The minerals agreement negotiated in recent days would open Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth to the United States but does not include U.S. security guarantees.
At a press conference in Kyiv on Feb. 26, Zelenskyy said, “I wanted to have a sentence on security guarantees for Ukraine, and it’s important that it’s there.”
Ukraine needs to know where the United States stands on its continued military support, Zelenskyy said.
Trump has also raised the prospect that the United States could stand to gain up to $500 billion through the development of Ukraine’s natural resources; an amount covering the wartime support the United States has given Kyiv, and more.
Rather than guaranteeing a dollar amount for the United States, the deal instead gives Washington the right to recoup some of the billions of dollars it has given to Kyiv through a reconstruction investment fund tied to the sale of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
Under the agreement Trump and Zelenskyy are expected to sign, Ukraine would contribute 50 percent of “all revenues earned from the future monetization of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets” to a reconstruction fund jointly owned and managed by the United States and Ukraine.
The agreement does not specify how the funds would be spent, or identify specific assets it covers, though it says they would include deposits of minerals, oil, and natural gas as well as infrastructure such as gas terminals and ports.
By Guy Birchall and Ryan Morgan
