President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine, at a closed -door meeting on Wednesday, rejected an offer from the Trump administration to give up half the country’s mineral resources in exchange for American support, according to five informed people the proposal or with direct knowledge of the talks.
The unusual agreement would have given 50% interest in the United States in all mineral resources in Ukraine, including graphite, lithium and uranium, according to two European officials. But it was not clear if it was designed as compensation only for the American support passed to the kyiv war effort against the Russian invaders, or if it also came in exchange for a future military and financial aid.
On Sunday, the American national security advisor Mike Waltz said that it was at least in part for past support. “The American people deserves to be recovered, deserves to have a kind of recovery for the billions they have invested in this war”, ” He was cited as said. “I think Zelensky would be very wise to conclude this agreement with the United States.”
A Ukrainian official and an energy expert informed of the proposal said that the Trump administration had requested not only Ukrainian minerals, but also additional natural resources, including oil and gas. The proposal, she said, would bring the United States to half of the profits from Ukraine resources-funds that are now invested in military and defense production of the country.
Mr. Zelensky, who has shown its opening to take advantage of Ukraine mineral resources in negotiations with the allies, said that he had rejected the agreement because he had not linked access to resources US security guarantees for kyiv in its fight against Russia.
Negotiations continue, according to a second Ukrainian official who, like the others, spoke under the cover of anonymity given the sensitivity of talks. But the expansion of the proposal and the tense negotiations that surround it, demonstrate the widening of the abyss between kyiv and Washington both on continuous American support and a potential end to war.
The request of half of Ukraine’s minerals was made on Wednesday, when the American secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, met Mr. Zelensky in kyiv, the first visit of a Trump administration official in Ukraine. The Treasury Department refused to comment on any negotiation.
After seeing the proposal, the Ukrainians decided to review the details and provide a counter-proposition when Mr. Zelensky visited the Munich security conference on Friday and met Vice-President JD Vance, according to the second Ukrainian official.
It is not clear if a counter-proposition has been presented. But Mr. Zelensky, addressing journalists in Munich on Saturday, admitted that he had rejected a proposal from the Trump administration. He did not specify the terms of the agreement, except that he had not included security guarantees.
“I don’t see this link in the document,” he said. “In my opinion, it is not ready to protect us, our interests.”
A security guarantee is essential because Ukrainians think that the United States and Great Britain have not complied with their obligations to protect the country under an agreement signed at the end of the Cold War, when the Ukraine has abandoned Russian nuclear weapons on its territory.
European diplomats had another objection. They complained that the offer is shaking colonialism, an era when Western countries have exploited smaller or lower nations for raw materials.
The Ukrainian official and the energy expert informed that Mr. Bessent’s offer said that the proposal had given the United States a complaint to half the revenues of Ukraine from the extraction of resources as well as that the sale of new extraction licenses.
In the first half of last year, Naftogaz, state and state of state of state, reported A profit greater than half a billion dollars.
The Ukrainian official said that, under the proposal, the United States would reinvest part of the profits it would receive in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. The proposal also indicates that the United States would have priority in the purchase of Ukrainian mineral exports, before other buyers, according to the Ukrainian official.
Ukraine has 109 important mineral deposits, including those with titanium, lithium and uranium minerals, according to a list compiled by the kyiv School of Economics, in addition to the oil and natural gas fields. Some, however, are in territory already under Russian occupation or near the front line.
Their value is uncertain. In addition to the risks of a repeated Russian invasion after a cease-fire-a risk that an agreement with the United States is intended to reduce-problems deeply rooted in the commercial climate of Ukraine have hindered the investment For a large part of the country’s post-independence history.
These include arcanic regulations and the transaction of initiates by Ukrainian businessmen and politicians, which could limit the profits of the arrangement. Even before the war, few investors were takers in the Ukrainian mining transactions.
But there is a precedent for Ukraine to mix security and business with the United States under Mr. Trump. During his first mandate, in 2017, he concluded an agreement for Ukraine to buy coal from Pennsylvania to replace the coal of mines in Ukraine lost under Russian occupation after the 2014 invasion.
Kostiiantyn Yeliseiev, former diplomat and deputy chief of staff to the president of Ukraine at the time of the agreement, recalled that the agreement had allowed Trump to declare that he had saved jobs in Pennsylvania, a swing state . For kyiv, the agreement opened the door to Mr. Trump to provide deadly military aid to Ukraine with the approval of anti -javelin anti -tank missile sales.
At the time, Ukrainian officials considered it a success, said Mr. Yeliseiev. “It confirmed that Trump is not a person of values, but a person of interests and money”, and that Ukraine could find a way to work with him on security, he said .
But the agreement under discussion now, he said, strengthens this approach in a way that could give Russia a propaganda victory by launching war as a battle for natural resources, not on independence or Ukrainian democracy.
“It is more important to say that it is a question of protecting democracies and defeating Putin,” he said.
