Final Details Being Agreed in Ukraine–US Minerals Deal, Says Ukrainian PM

Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said that the final details of the draft subsoil agreement with the US are being agreed upon and may be signed during the next 24 hours.

The Gaze reports on this with reference to European Pravda.

Shmyhal said that Ukraine is now ‘finalising the final details with our American colleagues’ and that First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko has already left for the US. 

He noted that it would be ‘an equal, good international agreement on joint investment in the development and recovery of Ukraine’.

‘As soon as all the final details are finalised, the agreement will be signed in the near future, I hope within the next day. And, accordingly, we will get the first step,’ said Denys Shmyhal.

‘All the fundamental points have been agreed upon, and the government has worked out the text of the agreement. In fact, at this point, the approvals of the main ministries have already been collected, so the government is technically ready at any time, as soon as we have the final information from our colleagues in Washington, to approve this agreement and we will be ready to sign it,’ he added. 

The prime minister elaborated that two more ‘technical’ agreements were to be signed afterwards - on the creation of the Investment Fund and its financing.

On 17 April, Ukraine and the United States signed a memorandum of intent to ‘finalise a formal agreement on economic partnership and the Reconstruction Investment Fund’.

The agreement, according to the memorandum, will provide for the creation of the Investment Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, and the work on the agreement cannot cause conflicts for Ukraine's European integration path.

As The Gaze reported earlier, the European Union understands that the preliminary draft of the Ukraine-US Minerals Agreement contained some provisions incompatible with EU law and therefore unacceptable to Ukraine, but believes that the Ukrainian authorities will be able to agree on a favourable version for Ukraine.