Ukraine apparently agrees with USA on raw materials deal

The USA is demanding 50 percent of all the country's raw material revenues from Ukraine. Washington does not want to give security guarantees in return.

Negotiations between the US and Ukraine on a raw materials agreement are apparently close to being concluded. As the Financial Times and the AFP news agency report, citing Ukrainian officials, Kiev has agreed to sign the agreement with Trump's administration.

The latest draft of the agreement stipulates that Ukraine will transfer half of all future revenues from rare earths, oil and gas to a fund to which Donald Trump 's US government will also have access. The fund is to be separate from the revenues from raw material sales that already flow into the state budget. The agreement should also not contradict other international agreements Ukraine has concluded - for example with the European Union.

At the same time, the fund is intended to serve reconstruction projects in Ukraine. According to the Financial Times, the agreement does not provide for security guarantees from the USA for Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently insisted on this. Details about how the future fund will work still need to be clarified.

According to the Financial Times, the Ukrainian ministers of justice, economy and foreign affairs have now approved the agreement. Zelensky will travel to Washington on Friday to meet with his US counterpart Donald Trump, the Reuters news agency learned on Tuesday from two people familiar with the matter. One of them said the US government had suggested the visit.

Trump himself told the press shortly afterwards that he had heard that Zelensky wanted to reach an agreement with him on natural resources and that he would come to Washington on Friday. The Ukrainian parliament will have the final say on the raw materials agreement.

"I heard that [Zelensky] is coming over on Friday, of course it's fine with me if he wants to, and he would be happy to sign [the agreement] with me," the US president told reporters in the Oval Office in his official residence in Washington, DC. For the American people, this is a "very big deal" because former President Joe Biden has "thrown money around like it was cotton candy."

Kiev had rejected the original draft of the agreement. It stipulated that Ukraine would pay the USA 500 billion US dollars from raw material revenues in the coming years. Washington had justified the demand with the military and financial aid it had previously provided to Ukraine. According to the latest information from the US Department of Defense, however, this aid did not even amount to 130 billion US dollars.

The agreement is considered important for Ukraine in order to secure Trump's support in the war against Russia . According to earlier information, the negotiations were recently about natural resources such as rare earths. Trump had demanded the agreement as compensation for the support the USA had provided so far. According to insiders, the government in Washington had discussed shutting down Elon Musk 's Starlink satellite internet system if no agreement was reached. Starlink belongs to SpaceX , one of the companies owned by Tesla CEO and Trump advisor Musk. It is considered important for the Ukrainian military.

The Financial Times quoted Ukrainian officials as saying that the agreement reached was initially a framework agreement. No money would be transferred to the USA until the commodity fund had been set up. A move from Russia the day before had also caused confusion.

On Monday, Kremlin chief Putin offered the USA a joint development of rare earth deposits in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. "We are ready to work with our partners there, including the US," the head of state said in an interview with state television about a possible raw materials agreement with the United States.

Russia has some of the world's largest deposits in the far north of the country, but also in the Caucasus, Siberia , the Far East and the occupied areas of Ukraine known as "new territories", Putin said. He had previously discussed the further development of raw material extraction with ministers and other representatives of the state leadership in a video conference.