Ukraine agrees minerals deal with US

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Kyiv has agreed terms with Washington on a minerals deal that Ukrainian officials hope will improve relations with the Trump administration and pave the way for a long-term US security commitment.

Ukrainian officials said Kyiv was ready to sign the agreement on jointly developing its mineral resources, including oil and gas, after the US dropped demands for a right to $500bn in potential revenue from the deal.

The Ukrainian government is set to give its formal approval to the deal on Wednesday.

Although the text lacks explicit security guarantees, the officials argued they had negotiated far more favourable terms and depicted the deal as a way of broadening the relationship with the US to shore up Ukraine’s prospects after three years of war.

“The minerals agreement is only part of the picture. We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and justice minister who has led the negotiations, told the Financial Times on Tuesday.

A Ukrainian official with knowledge of the matter said president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was planning to travel to Washington on Friday to see Donald Trump and formalise the deal.

On Tuesday, the US president appeared to confirm his Ukrainian counterpart’s visit, saying: “I hear that [Zelenskyy is] coming on Friday. Certainly it’s OK with me if he’d like to.”

The original draft agreement’s highly onerous terms — which Trump presented as a means of Ukraine repaying the US for military and financial aid since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion — provoked outrage in Kyiv and other European capitals. 

After Zelenskyy rejected that initial text last week, Trump called him a “dictator” and appeared to blame Ukraine for starting the war.

The final version of the agreement, dated February 25 and seen by the FT, would establish a fund into which Ukraine would contribute 50 per cent of proceeds from the “future monetisation” of state-owned mineral resources, including oil and gas, and associated logistics. The fund would also be able to invest in projects in Ukraine.

Ukraine has large underground deposits of critical minerals, including lithium, graphite, cobalt, titanium and rare earths such as scandium, that are essential for an array of industries from defence to electric vehicles.

The agreement excludes mineral resources that already contribute to Ukrainian government coffers, meaning it would not cover the existing activities of Naftogaz or Ukrnafta, Ukraine’s largest gas and oil producers.

However, it omits any reference to US security guarantees, which Kyiv had originally insisted on in return for agreeing to the deal.

It also leaves crucial questions such as the size of the US stake in the fund and the terms of “joint ownership” deals to be thrashed out in follow-up agreements.

After three years in which the US was Kyiv’s primary military aid donor, Trump has overturned Washington’s policy by opening bilateral talks with Russia, without any European allies or Ukraine at the table.

The Trump administration’s initial sweeping proposal called for a reconstruction investment fund in which the US “maintains 100 per cent financial interest”.

Ukraine would contribute 50 per cent of the fund’s revenue from mineral resources extraction, including oil and gas and associated infrastructure, up to a maximum of $500bn. 

Those terms, described as unacceptable by Ukrainian officials, have been removed from the final draft. 

The mandate for the fund to invest in Ukraine is a further change Kyiv had sought. The document states the US will back Ukraine’s economic development into the future.

Ukrainian officials added the deal was just a “framework agreement” and that no revenue would change hands until the fund was in place, allowing them time to iron out any potential disagreements. Among the outstanding issues is to agree the jurisdiction of the agreement.

The final version of the deal says it will have to be ratified by Ukraine’s parliament according to the country’s law on international treaties. But it makes no similar provision for the US, where obtaining the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate has long been an obstacle for the ratification of treaties.

Ukrainian opposition MPs have signalled they will at the very least have a heated debate before backing the agreement.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday it was “critical that this deal is signed”, though she did not provide an update on the talks.

Additional reporting by James Politi and Felicia Schwartz in Washington

This story has been amended to reflect the fact that the deal is based on a revised agreement dated February 25

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