Zelensky to sign minerals deal with Trump in White House visit

Donald Trump says ‘it could be a trillion-dollar deal’, but the US has agreed to cut clauses demanding $500bn worth of resources from Ukraine.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump.

Ukraine has agreed to a mineral rights deal with the US that President Trump said would be finalised on Friday in a White House signing ceremony with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

People close to the negotiations said the text had now been agreed on, and the US had dropped its previous demand for the right to $500bn in potential revenue from the development of Ukraine’s mineral resources.

“It’s a very big deal. It could be a trillion-dollar deal,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Ukraine and Russia fighting a war that should have never ever happened.”

The signing ceremony would be a personal victory for Zelensky, who has been pushing for a face-to-face meeting with Trump but has instead had to watch as the US opened discussions with Moscow about how to end the war — excluding Ukraine. The Ukrainian president had refused to sign the mineral-rights deal presented by a lower-level official, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Zelensky’s refusal to sign set off a rapid deterioration in the relationship between Washington and Kyiv.

The Ukrainian president had said for months that Ukraine’s allies in the war against Russia could have access to the country’s mineral resources. However, he said he couldn’t sign an agreement that didn’t include security guarantees for Ukraine. Officials across Europe also expressed shock at some of the demands the US had made in the offer, including the right to up to $500bn in revenue from mineral development, which is far more than the US has contributed to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began.

“I don’t want something that 10 generations of Ukrainians will have to pay back,” he said at a news conference on Sunday.

After Zelensky refused the initial offer, Trump called him a dictator and falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war. Top US officials met with their Russian counterparts to discuss how to end the conflict, without Ukraine, and the US voted against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion.

Though the new text doesn’t include security guarantees, Ukrainian officials hope it can help reset the country’s relationship with Trump.

Members of the Ukrainian armed forces are deployed amid the conflict with Russia.

Trump said that there would be peacekeepers in Ukraine, but didn’t say if the US would provide any support or troops to the deterrence mission. Despite Russia’s opposition to European forces in Ukraine, Trump assured reporters Tuesday the agreement would include “a form of peacekeeping that’s acceptable to everybody.”

The agreement on the final text of a deal was earlier reported by the Financial Times.

Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine would pay some proceeds from future mineral resource development into a fund that would invest in projects in Ukraine. Resources that already make money for the Ukrainian government — such as existing oil and gas production — will be exempt from the deal.

The size of the US’s stake in the fund and joint ownership deals will be hashed out in future agreements.

Up to now, the US has been Ukraine’s largest supporter during the war, sending more than $100 billion in aid to the country, including nearly $70 billion in military aid.

However, Trump’s statements in recent days have jolted not only Kyiv but leaders across Europe, who have held a series of meetings over the past week to plan for how they could aid Ukraine if the US pulled its support.

Without US support, current and former Western officials say, Ukraine is well equipped to keep fighting at the same intensity at least until summer. After that, however, Kyiv could find itself short of ammunition and unable to use some of its most sophisticated weaponry.

Hoping to further distance Washington from Kyiv, the Kremlin recently floated an offer to give the US access to mineral resources in Russia and in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. Europe, meanwhile, put together its own mineral rights offer for Ukraine.

Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank in Washington, said Ukraine’s agreement with the US could increase Trump’s leverage in peace talks with Russia.

“It should be something big that the US demands from Moscow as this was a big concession from Ukraine,” she said.

Ukraine is believed to have deposits of at least 20 of the 50 minerals that the US considers critical. These include lithium, graphite, titanium, uranium and rare earths, a collection of 17 elements that are essential for everything from cellphones to the defence industry.

Their collective potential value is estimated to be trillions of dollars, according to industry analysts.

However, up to 40% of those mineral deposits are in areas of the country currently under Russian occupation. Much of what is under Ukrainian control has never been mined. Making them commercially viable will, in some cases, require years of studies and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment — capital that will be difficult to raise while the war is still going on.
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