The United States and Ukraine have reached a deal providing access to the European country’s rare earth minerals and other natural resources, US President Donald Trump has said.
Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Trump confirmed earlier reports that he had reached an agreement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to develop his country’s natural resources.
“I hear that he is coming on Friday. Certainly, it’s OK with me if he would like to. And he would like to sign it together with me, and I understand that’s a big deal, a very big deal,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office.
Trump said the deal could be worth $1 trillion and will ensure that American taxpayers “get their money back, plus”.
“We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Russia and Ukraine fighting a war that should have never, ever happened.”
Asked what Kyiv would get in return, Trump cited aid worth $350bn that he has claimed has already been provided and “military equipment and the right to fight on”.
The US Congress appropriated $174bn for Ukraine between 2022 and 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Trump’s remarks followed media reports that the US and Ukraine had reached an agreement after Zelenskyy previously rejected an earlier draft that would have signed away the rights to $500bn worth of natural resources.
The breakthrough comes as Ukraine is hoping to repair relations with the Trump administration amid tensions over his decision to exclude Kyiv from negotiations with Moscow to end the war.
Trump’s outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his verbal attacks on Zelenskyy have raised concern in Kyiv and European capitals that he is inclined towards bringing a swift end to the conflict on terms that favour Moscow.
Trump last week branded Zelenskyy a “dictator” over his decision to suspend elections following Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion and accused the Ukrainian leader of shirking efforts to make peace so he can continue the “gravy train” of US aid.
Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford said that Ukrainian officials believe Zelenskyy’s cabinet will on Wednesday recommend that he sign the deal with Trump.
“This is hugely significant, because certainly, according to the Ukrainians, we’ve been speaking to all week, this [deal] is seen as a means for Donald Trump to basically get what he wants,” Stratford said.
While Zelenskyy initially rejected the deal as it “didn’t have enough security guarantees”, Stratford said Trump has applied “significant additional pressure since then”.
Although the full details of the deal have not been confirmed, multiple media outlets reported that Ukraine would contribute 50 percent of the proceeds from the future monetisation of its resources to a jointly owned fund, which would invest in projects in Ukraine.
The draft text reportedly does not include explicit US security guarantees.
The Financial Times, which first reported on the deal, said the size of Washington’s stake in the fund had yet to be determined.
Matthew Sussex, a visiting fellow at the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, said the deal would give Washington and Kyiv “a way to reset after the recent war of words”.
“As I understand it, the US has considerably watered down its demands. That makes it more palatable to Kyiv, even though there is no security guarantee attached: essentially Ukraine gets nothing, but doesn’t have to give much either,” Sussex told Al Jazeera.
Ukraine is believed to hold about 5 percent of the world’s reserves of rare earths, according to UN data.
The minerals, which include lanthanum, cerium and praseodymium, are key ingredients in the manufacturing of electronics, batteries and magnets, among other items.
