After Another Talks with Ukraine, Trump Says Parties to Close Minerals Deal ‘Very Shortly’
US President Donald Trump has said that Kyiv and Washington will sign an agreement on the extraction of critical mineral resources in Ukraine very soon. He made this statement after signing an order to increase the production of critical minerals in the United States, Reuters reports.
‘We're doing very well with regard to Ukraine and Russia. And one of the things we are doing is signing a deal very shortly with respect to rare earths with Ukraine,’ he claimed.
The US president said he had signed a decree to ‘significantly increase’ the production of critical minerals and rare earth metals.
‘This is very important for our country, and as you know, we're also signing agreements in different places to unlock the extraction of rare earths and minerals and many other things around the world, including in Ukraine,’ he said, adding that Ukraine ’has a huge importance in rare earth resources, and we appreciate that.’
As noted by Reuters, this month Ukraine and the US said they had agreed to conclude a comprehensive agreement on the development of Ukraine's critical mineral resources as soon as possible, which Trump sees as a way to repay the US for its assistance to Kyiv.
As The Gaze reported, the first attempt to conclude this deal failed on 28 February, when Trump and the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a dispute at the White House over how to end the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian president left the White House early after the US president's ambiguous and contradictory statements.
Reuters notes that it is unclear whether the agreement has changed since then. The previous version did not contain the clear security guarantees sought by Ukraine, but gave the US access to revenues from Ukrainian natural resources. It also stipulated that the Ukrainian government would contribute 50% of monetised amounts for state-owned natural resources to the US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.
Asked how the current version of the mining agreement differs from the previous draft, a senior U.S. official said it was ‘more detailed and comprehensive,’ but declined to elaborate.