Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at press briefing, Kyiv, 26 February 2025. Photo: EPA-EFE

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stressed that all funding provided to Kyiv by Washington to date was given to the country as a grant rather than a loan, and that Ukraine therefore was not in debt to the US, RBC Ukraine reported on Wednesday.

“The most important thing from my point of view is to point out that we are not in debt. There is no 500, no 350, no 100 billion of debt in the agreement. That would be unfair to us,” Zelensky told reporters at a press briefing.

Earlier on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump had confirmed that Zelensky would come to Washington in person on Friday to sign a revised agreement on natural resources, and said that the US would recover all the money it had sent to Ukraine “and a lot of money in the future”, adding that American taxpayers “shouldn’t be footing the bill” for the war.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian newspaper European Pravda published the final text of the rare earth metals agreement between the two countries. In it, the governments commit to achieving lasting peace in Ukraine and establishing a Reconstruction Investment Fund to be jointly managed by the two sides.

According to the agreement, the Ukrainian government will contribute 50% percent of all revenues earned from the future monetisation of all relevant Ukrainian government-owned natural resources, which it defines as “deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and other extractable materials, and other infrastructure relevant to natural resource assets”.