Trump has said a minerals deal will help secure a peace agreement by giving the United States a financial stake in Ukraine’s future
The administration has proposed a new, more expansive minerals deal with Ukraine. The US has revised its original proposal, said the sources, and it gives Ukraine no future security guarantees but requires it to contribute to a joint investment fund all income from the use of natural resources managed by state and private enterprises across Ukrainian territory.
The terms put forward by Washington go well beyond the deal discussed in the days leading up to the contentious Oval Office meeting last month between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been leading negotiations for the United States. The proposal makes no mention of the US taking ownership of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, according to the summary – something Trump had talked about.
Trump has said a minerals deal will help secure a peace agreement by giving the United States a financial stake in Ukraine’s future. He also sees it as America’s way of earning back some of the tens of billions of dollars it has given to Ukraine in financial and military aid since Russia invaded three years ago.
National Security Council spokesperson James Hewitt declined to confirm the terms of the latest proposal, but said the deal would strengthen the relationship between the US and Ukraine. “The mineral deal offers Ukraine the opportunity to form an enduring economic relationship with the United States that is the basis for long term security and peace,” said Hewitt.
Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An earlier version of the deal proposed a joint investment fund where Ukraine would contribute 50% of proceeds from the future profits of the extraction of the state-owned natural resources. It also set out terms that the US and Ukraine would jointly develop Ukraine’s mineral resources.
Zelenskiy told reporters on Tuesday that the US had proposed a “major” new deal and that Ukrainian officials were still reviewing its terms. Zelenskiy said on Thursday the US is “constantly” changing the terms of the proposed minerals deal, but added that he did not want Washington to think Kyiv was against the deal.
In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, Bessent said the US had “passed along a completed document for the economic partnership” and that Washington hopes to “go to full discussions and perhaps even get signatures next week.”
The new proposal stipulates that the US is given first rights to purchase resources extracted under the agreement and that it recoup all the money it has given Ukraine since 2022, in addition to a 4% annual interest rate, before Ukraine begins to gain access to the fund’s profits, according to the summary. The updated proposal was first reported by the Financial Times.
If agreed, the joint investment fund would have a board of five people, three appointed by the US and two by Ukraine, and the funds generated would be converted into foreign currency and transferred abroad, according to the summary. The fund would be managed by the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
Meanwhile, Zelenskiy has said that Russian artillery had damaged Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the front-line city of Kherson, two days after the US announced that each side had agreed to a truce on energy strikes.
“Two days ago, there was a night when there were no strikes on the energy sector, today energy infrastructure in the city of Kherson was damaged by Russian artillery,” Zelenskiy said in Paris. “I believe that the U.S. should respond with actions.”
The United States announced separate agreements with Kyiv and Moscow on Tuesday to pause attacks in the Black Sea and against each other’s energy installations, the first such deal since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
“Our side, as long as no one understands who is monitoring what …, all this (evidence) will be prepared and transferred to the U.S., and after that we are waiting for America’s reaction, since they told us that they will respond to violations,” Zelenskiy said after a summit of Ukraine’s allies in the French capital. Kherson regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said work was continuing to restore power to consumers who had been left without supply as a result of Russian shelling.
