President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would visit the White House on Friday to sign a long-awaited minerals agreement that will bind the two countries together for years to come.
Trump announced the pact at the start of his second-term Cabinet meeting, calling it “a very big agreement.”
Trump has long complained that the US has spent too much taxpayer money to defend Ukraine in its war with Russia, which began three years ago when the Kremlin invaded.
Trump has presented the nascent pact, which would grant the US access to Ukraine’s supplies of so-called rare earth minerals — used in the aerospace, defense, and nuclear industries — as an opportunity for Kyiv to repay the US for money previously sent to the war effort under Democratic President Joe Biden.
“The previous administration put us in a very bad position, but we’ve been able to make a deal where we’re going to get the money back and a lot of money in the future,” Trump said.
Zelenskyy said a news conference early Wednesday in Kyiv that a framework of an economic deal had been reached, but that it did not yet include U.S. security guarantees, which his country sees as vital. The full agreement could hinge on the upcoming talks in Washington.
The framework is a preliminary step toward a comprehensive package that will be subject to ratification by the Ukrainian parliament, Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine needs to know first where the U.S. stands on its continued military support, Zelenskyy said. He said he expected a wide-ranging conversation with Trump.
The economic agreement “may be part of future security guarantees, but I want to understand the broader vision. What awaits Ukraine?” Zelensky said.
But Trump, in announcing the meeting, was noncommittal about any coming American security guarantees.
He said a U.S. presence working on mineral extraction would amount to “automatic security because nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there.”
Since returning to office last month, Trump let Ukraine know that he wanted something in return for tens of billions of dollars in U.S. help for Ukraine. The White House has applied heavy pressure on Ukraine to grant American access to its vast reserves of the minerals.
Zelenskyy balked at initial U.S. offers, arguing they did not contain adequate security assurances for Ukraine and that the proposed price tag of $500 billion would saddle generations of Ukrainians with debt. But Kyiv is also keen to use the investments as a way of locking the U.S. into Ukraine’s fate.
The latest version of the agreement, seen by The Associated Press, says the U.S. “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.” It does not spell out any U.S. commitment to provide them.
After Zelenskyy spoke, a White House official made clear that accepting the agreement would be a precondition of Trump’s invitation to meet Friday.
