US President Donald Trump has said Russian President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit the White House on Friday to sign a major minerals deal.
The deal will see Ukraine hand over billions of its mineral wealth and other resources to the US.
Zelensky told CNN that the proposed deal is a ‘framework’ but added that it does not have ‘concrete steps on security guarantees’ because they need to be agreed upon with the US and Europe.
The Ukrainian president hopes that the minerals deal will help his country gain security and Trump’s support.
Under the agreement, Ukraine and the US would jointly create a Reconstruction Investment Fund. Ukraine would contribute 50% of all revenues from natural resource assets like rare earth minerals, natural gas and oil and hydrocarbons.
Over the weekend, Trump stated that he is ‘trying to get the money back’ that the Biden administration sent to Ukraine to help fight Russia’s invasion and war.
Zelensky said in a news conference in Kyiv that Ukraine pay back the money as part of the minerals deal.
‘I will not accept (even) 10 cents of debt repayment in this deal,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, it will be a precedent.’
Ukraine controls more than 100 major deposits of rare minerals on top of oil and natural gas reserves, some of the largest in Europe, a pre-war assessment by the Kyiv School of Economics found.
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