After months of negotiations and with a war raging in the foreground, the United States is going into business with Ukraine.
Representatives of the two nations signed on Wednesday an agreement over access to Ukraine’s natural resources. The United States will get first claim on profits transferred into a jointly managed reconstruction investment fund. The Reconstruction Investment Fund Agreement is based on future revenues from Ukraine’s mineral reserves.
However, according to Kiev’s Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, the terms of the agreement include “full ownership and control” of the resources staying with Ukraine. “All resources on our territory and in territorial waters belong to Ukraine,” she said. “It is the Ukrainian state that determines what and where to extract. Subsoil remains under Ukrainian ownership — this is clearly established in the Agreement.”
The deal has been months in the works. It was supposed to be inked in February at the White House. Instead, a shouting match erupted between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the latter was kicked out of the White House.
High-ranking White House official Stephen Miller said the deal is meant “to pay back the United States — that’s the key point — for the hundreds of billions of dollars that our taxpayers have spent subsidizing the war in Ukraine.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the agreement a “historic economic partnership.” He also noted the effect the U.S. would like it to have on Ukraine’s ongoing war with its neighbor Russia:
This partnership allows the United States to invest alongside Ukraine to unlock Ukraine’s growth assets; mobilize American talent, capital, and governance standards that will improve Ukraine’s investment climate; and accelerate Ukraine’s economic recovery. … Today’s agreement signals clearly to Russian leadership that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term. It’s time for this cruel and senseless war to end. The killing must stop.
Bessent said America looks forward to putting the agreement into action. However, it remains to be seen how that will come about given that Ukraine is still embroiled in a vicious and losing fight with its neighbor.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been at the center of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, said outright that the agreement is meant to bring an end to the war: “Today the U.S. and Ukraine signed the Reconstruction Investment Fund Agreement — a milestone in our shared prosperity and an important step in ending this war.”
Based on previous versions of the deal and reports from individuals who claimed to speak to someone familiar with the negotiations, “the final deal does not include explicit guarantees of future U.S. security assistance.”
However, the deal obviously gives the U.S. a vested interest in peace and stability prevailing in the region.
The Russians have taken note of this element, as evidenced in reporting on its state-controlled media organ RT.
A Russian representative responded to the development by mocking Ukraine as “the country that is about to disappear.”
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said that Trump had finally succeeded in applying enough pressure onto Kiev to pay for military supplies, adding a not-so-veiled threat in his Telegram statement:
Trump has finally pressured the Kiev regime to pay for US aid with mineral resources. Now, the country that is about to disappear will have to use its national wealth to pay for military supplies.
Trump has in the past floated willingness to do business with Russia, as well. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he’s open to it:
Russia possesses significantly larger resources of this kind than Ukraine. Russia is one of the uncontested leaders when it comes to rare-earth minerals. … We would be happy to cooperate with any foreign partners, including American companies.
Ukraine has deposits of 22 of the 50 minerals considered critical to the U.S. But, as many have noted, it is not exactly overflowing with them. While many are in regions now under Russian control, according to CNN, they are spread through much of the country.
Among the most plentiful is titanium. There are also deposits of graphite, beryllium, iron, rare earths, and non-ferrous metals.
The world’s superpowers are vying for access to these resources. They are critical to high-tech products, including cellphones, computer hard drives, electric and hybrid vehicle parts, and flat screen TVs and monitors. They’re used in medicine and energy storage, as well. Moreover, these minerals are crucial for national defense. They are used to make electronic displays, guidance systems, lasers, and radar and sonar systems.
Most rare earths used for products today come out of China, with recent reports saying China processes 90 percent globally. In 2019, the U.S. imported 78 percent of its rare-earth minerals from China.
The United States is trying to wean itself off of China’s rare earths, and in 2023 accounted for 12.3 percent of global production. The reopening of Mountain Pass Mine in California was a big step toward reducing reliance on China. The abundance of these resources in Greenland makes the Arctic island all the more valuable to us. And, of course, there’s Trump’s attempt to gain access to Ukraine’s rare earths.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a rabid anti-Trumper, said the deal “is nonsense.” He said that because Russia controls the eastern border regions of Ukraine and the Trump administration’s plan is to mediate a deal that allows Russia to keep those parts, the deal “isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”
According to right-wing social media influencer Ian Miles Cheong:
Trump is going to carve up Ukraine with this minerals deal. Ukraine might not have to pay America back for its prior investment but it will effectively become a vassal of the US as the very soil beneath the feet of every Ukrainian now belongs to America. Sovereign in name only.
Journalist Michael Tracey tweeted, “If you’ve been demanding the disengagement of the US from Ukraine, it would be strange to cheer today’s signing of the ‘minerals deal,’ which establishes a long-term ‘”‘partnership’ between the US and Ukraine.”
And CNBS anchor Brian Sullivan tweeted, “The deal: we access some of their elements in exchange for the creation of a reconstruction fund. But this is really about China, not Ukraine. We need other sources of minerals. This comes despite all the White House on-camera drama. Deals happen off camera, not on.”
Col. Douglas Macgregor told Judge Andrew Napolitano the deal was an attempt to present a win for the Trump administration. He also claims the deal does indeed embroil the U.S. with military security “as part of the reciprocity involved with our first access to whatever mineral wealth is there.” Moreover, he said:
I think [the Trump administration] decided that if we can get something on paper that looks like Americans are going to benefit … well then, the president looks like a winner. This is the transactional mentality that he’s adopted. … But the real question is why … this president, [who] started out [with] a very good attempt to normalize relations with Moscow and to bring this war to an end, has now suddenly changed horses [and] run back to Zelensky, who is about as reliable as the wind at this point.