White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will soon sign an agreement to cede control of much of his country’s rare earth minerals to the U.S. as part of a process he says will lead to an end to the war with Russia.
Speaking to attendees at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Maryland on Friday, Waltz said Donald Trump’s leadership as “the president of peace” will result in the war, which started when Russian troops invaded eastern Ukraine, being drawn to a close.
He attacked critics from both parties who have condemned Trump’s apparent decision to withdraw America’s strong support of Ukraine with a more pro-Russian attitude that blames Zelensky for the start of the war, accusing them of “clutching their pearls and having conniption fits” over Trump’s overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“President Trump's ready to stop the killing, stop the hundreds of thousands of people that are dying per year in Europe, the largest war in Europe since World War Two, and you see the same voices that are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza post October 7 ... oppose peace in Europe? It makes no sense. But under his leadership, we're sitting — with our hosts, the Saudis — and talking to the Russians, understanding what they are going to need, and then understanding what the Ukrainians are going to need, talking to all of the Europeans,” he said.
Waltz pointed out that it was Zelensky who’d first floated the idea of using Ukrainian mineral rights to repay America for the billions of defense aid provided over the last few years.
Earlier in the week, Zelensky appeared to reject a deal that would have handed more than $500 billion in mining rights over to the U.S. But Waltz said Zelensky will be forced to take the deal.
“Look, here's the bottom line, President Zelensky is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term ... that is good for Ukraine,” he said.
Waltz said the American government has a responsibility to recoup the billions in defense aid that Kyiv has been provided and pointed to how the European Union is doing the same by using seized Russian assets to pay down interest on defense loans it has made to Ukraine during the war as justification for the Trump-backed mineral rights deal.
Continuing, he added that Trump would not only end the Russia-Ukraine war by negotiating a lasting peace deal, but would do the same in the decades-old conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“This is the presidency of peace. He's going to end the war in Europe. He is going to end the wars in the Middle East. He is going to reinvest the United States and our leadership in our own hemisphere, from the Arctic, to the border, to Panama, all the way down to our good friends in Argentina with President Milei ... and you know what? By the end of this all, we're going to have the Nobel Peace Prize sitting next to the name of Donald J Trump,” he said.
Waltz’s prediction of Ukraine accepting the Trump-backed mineral deal comes less than 24 hours after Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, met with Zelensky in Kyiv after Trump and Zelensky got into a public spat over the American president’s description of Zelensky as a “dictator.”
On Wednesday, Trump appeared to throw America’s lot completely in with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the three-year-old war the Russian leader started against Ukraine by issuing a bizarre social media threat against Zelensky and accusing him of continuing the war against Moscow as a way to soak American taxpayers.
In a post on his Truth Social website, Trump accused Zelensky, who he called a “modestly successful comedian” in a reference to his previous career as a sitcom star and entertainer, of having “talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start.”
He also claimed Zelensky — who recent opinion polls show as holding support from a majority of Ukrainians — “refuses to have Elections” and falsely accused the Ukrainian leader of being “very low” in polls. He went on to accuse Zelensky of having “played” former president Joe Biden “like a fiddle” for military assistance funds approved by the U.S. Congress over the last three years.
Trump’s comments appeared to be in part a reaction to criticism of the U.S. leader by Zelensky, who reacted to Trump falsely blaming his government for the war by suggesting that the American leader was "living in a disinformation space" created by Russia.
But in the wake of Zelensky’s meeting with Kellogg, the Ukrainian leader appeared to be back on board with a mineral deal.
In his nightly televised address he said the sit-down with the American envoy “restores hope” and stressed that both countries need “strong agreements that will really work.”
“The details of the agreement are important. The better the details are drafted, the better the result,” he added.
