Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, has reportedly agreed to a minerals rights deal with the U.S. and could sign the agreement when he meets with President Donald Trump, right, later this week.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the text of the deal has been approved by both countries.
The Trump administration reportedly dropped its request for the right to $500 billion in revenue from Ukrainian mineral resources.
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Trump has framed the deal as necessary to recoup substantial American funding of the Ukrainian war effort against Russia.
“It’s a very big deal. It could be a trillion-dollar deal,” Trump said to reporters on Tuesday.
“We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Ukraine and Russia fighting a war that should have never ever happened.”
The conflict in Eastern Europe has now persisted for over three years.
Zelenskyy has vowed to offer countries helping the Ukrainian war effort access to mineral resources, but he refused to sign the mineral rights deal when it was presented by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Those minerals include at least 20 of the 50 substances that the United States sees as critical, according to the Journal, including lithium, graphite, titanium, uranium, and rare earth elements.
Zelenskyy also voiced a desire to have security guarantees for Ukraine in the deal.
“I don’t want something that 10 generations of Ukrainians will have to pay back,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference on Sunday, per the Journal.
The deal does not include security guarantees from the United States or continued weapons supplies, though the latter is still being discussed, according to Reuters.
“What we’re doing is, now we’re saying, ‘Look, we want to be secured,’” Trump said of the deal.
“The American taxpayer now is going to get their money back, plus.”
Trump has previously said that the United States spent $350 billion on funding the Ukraine war or assisting the war-torn country.
One federal interagency group places the figure at $183 billion as of the last day of 2024.
The Kiel Institute estimates American involvement at $119.2 billion.
European Union institutions have comparatively allocated $52.1 billion, while individual European nations have provided an additional $60.4 billion, according to the entity.
Alina Polyakova, the chief executive of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think tank in Washington, D.C., told the Journal that the mineral deal could improve Trump’s standing as his administration negotiates with Russia.
“It should be something big that the U.S. demands from Moscow as this was a big concession from Ukraine,” she asserted.
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