President Donald Trump on Thursday said the United States and Ukraine would sign an agreement giving America access to much of Ukraine’s mineral wealth next week, more than a month after a planned White House signing ceremony with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was aborted after a disastrous meeting between him and Trump in the Oval Office.
Trump announced the revived agreement and said it would be signed a week from today as he spoke to reporters alongside Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni on Thursday.
“Well, we have a minerals deal, which I guess is going to be signed on Thursday ... and I assume they're going to live up to the deal, so we'll see,” he said.
The president’s announcement indicates that relations between Washington and Kyiv — which have taken a downward turn since Trump’s inauguration on account of his administration’s generally pro-Russian outlook — are on the mend weeks after a public spat between Trump and Zelensky brought them to a nadir even as Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure to take advantage of Trump’s reluctance to provide Kyiv with more military aid.
The revived minerals deal is a sign that both countries have agreed on allowing American access to exploit Ukrainian mineral deposits in exchange for continued financial and military aid. It comes as Trump has continued to tout pro-Russian narratives about the causes of the three-year-old war between Moscow and Kyiv and blame Zelensky for starting the war, which was in reality started by Russia.
The president has also repeatedly demanded access to Ukrainian mineral wealth and concessions to future development rights as a form of compensation for the aid that the U.S. has given Kyiv since Russia launched an unprovoked invasion in February 2022.
Trump was speaking as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff were meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris to discuss how to bring the Ukraine-Russia war to an end.
During February’s disastrous Oval Office blowup that derailed the previous attempt at a mineral plan, a question-and-answer session with reporters devolved into a shouting match that ended with a vulgar, grievance-filled rant from Trump and taunts about Zelensky’s supposed lack of gratitude from Vice President JD Vance.
As reporters watched, the two men spoke about the mineral deal that Zelensky’s government has been discussing with Trump administration officials for several weeks, with Trump saying it was “an honor” to have Zelensky at the White House — his first visit to Washington since the change of administration — and describing the work to reach a deal as “very hard” while saying it was going “very well.”
But the conversation took a turn after roughly 30 minutes of questions from reporters as the subject turned to whether the agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine would include any security guarantees from the American side.
Vance berated Zelensky about his supposed lack of gratitude to his American benefactors, and the Ukrainian leader was asked to leave the White House shortly thereafter without signing the agreement.
Trump claims that the deal is needed because in his view, past aid should be treated as loans and debt for Ukraine to repay, but Kyiv has refused to accept his framing of the situation.
Meanwhile, Moscow has continued to rain down aerial attacks on the Ukrainian population even as Trump has tried to engage Russia in what he has described as peace talks that were supposed to have resulted in at least a temporary ceasefire weeks ago.
While the Ukrainian government had agreed to pause attacks on energy infrastructure as an opening measure, Russian forces never stopped targeting Ukraine’s power grid or civilian targets. But Trump has refused to provide Kyiv with further defensive aid, including the U.S. built anti-aircraft missiles that Ukrainian forces have been using to repel Russian attacks from above.
The president has continued to blame Zelensky for the war started by Russia, and Trump’s Ukraine envoy, retired lieutenant general Keith Kellogg, told The Times last week that one way to end the war could be to partition Ukraine in a manner similar to how Germany was split asunder after its defeat at the end of the Second World War.
Under the plan floated by Kellogg, the eastern half would be occupied by Russia, while an Anglo-French force could patrol the western half of Ukraine with the two forces separated by a demilitarized zone.
“You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War Two, when you had a Russian zone, a French zone, and a British zone, a US zone,” he said, adding the caveat that America would not contribute any ground forces to secure Ukraine.
Trump says Fed Chair’s ‘termination cannot come fast enough’ after tariff comments
Colombian national ‘broke ICE agent’s nose’ during attempted arrest in New Jersey
Ukrainian tennis player Lesia Tsurenko sues WTA and its chairman for causing 'emotional distress'
Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer reenlists in Marine Corps reserves after 15 years
Trump suggests Jimmy Carter ‘died a happy man’ knowing Biden was a worse president
Trump fumes that he ‘can’t even go after’ January 6 investigators pardoned by Biden
