Donald Trump has announced that Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal, but the US will not provide significant security guarantees to Ukraine as part of the agreement.
The conclusion of a deal, which Trump has claimed would allow the US to recoup hundreds of billions of dollars it spent on military aid to Kyiv, followed days of intense negotiations in which Zelenskyy said he wanted the US to guarantee Ukraine’s security against the ongoing Russian invasion.
Uncertainty remains over the specifics of the agreement, which would establish a joint fund between the US and Ukraine that would receive revenues from the mining of rare earth metals and other precious minerals in Ukraine, as well as some oil and gas revenues.
Trump announced during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that he could confirm that Zelenskyy would arrive in Washington on Friday to sign the deal, calling it a “very big agreement that will be on rare earth and other things”.
Zelenskyy had resisted pressure from the US to sign a draft of the deal at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month that would have established a joint fund 100% owned by the US, according to media reports. “I will not sign what 10 generations of Ukrainians will have to pay back,” he said at a news conference on Sunday.
Since then, negotiators had gone back and forth over the specifics of the joint venture, while Ukraine pushed for more specific language about long-term US support for Ukrainian sovereignty.
Trump, when asked about the specific guarantees he would provide to Ukraine as part of the deal, said: “Well I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re going to have Europe do that.”
He brushed aside Ukraine’s aspiration to join Nato, repeating a Russian talking point that the issue triggered the war. “Nato you can forget about,” Trump said. “I think that’s probably the reason the whole thing started.”
Media reports suggested the draft contained only vague language on security guarantees.
Zelenskyy described the deal as “preliminary”, adding that it was “just a start, a framework, it can be a big success”.
The Ukrainian leader said that if he visited the White House on Friday, he would be “very direct” in asking whether the US would continue supporting Ukraine or not. “If we don’t get security guarantees, we won’t have a ceasefire, nothing will work, nothing,” he said.
Zelenskyy’s comments came after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, reinforced Moscow’s rejection of the idea of European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, contradicting Trump’s claims earlier this week that Vladimir Putin supported the presence of western forces on the ground.
“Trump said that a decision on the deployment of peacekeeping forces would only be possible with the consent of both sides, apparently referring to us and Ukraine. Nobody has asked us about this,” Lavrov said.
European leaders are due to meet in London on Sunday to discuss defence and security issues, including a proposal to deploy European troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire is reached, aiming to deter further Russian aggression.
Under one of the proposals, supported by the UK and France, there would be fewer than 30,000 European troops on the ground in Ukraine, away from the frontline at key infrastructure sites such as nuclear power plants, backed by western air and sea power.
Lavrov said the peacekeeping proposals coming from London and Paris were a “deceit” aimed at pumping Ukraine full of more weapons, and would draw Ukraine further into Nato’s sphere and infringe on the rights of Russian speakers there.
On Thursday, Russian and US diplomats will meet in Istanbul to discuss improving diplomatic relations. It will mark the second consecutive week of meetings between Washington and Moscow, after last week’s discussions in Saudi Arabia, signalling a thaw in relations under the Trump administration.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in Riyadh last week that the two countries would work to restore their diplomatic missions in Washington and Moscow as part of negotiations towards ending the conflict in Ukraine. Moscow has had no ambassador in Washington since the previous envoy, Anatoly Antonov, left his post last October.
On Tuesday, when confronted by journalists about Moscow’s rejection of peacekeeping troops, Trump said he believed that “ultimately, we’ll be able to agree on something, I’m sure”.
He said: “Something will be done that’s going to be satisfactory to everybody … It’s actually something I did discuss. A form of peacekeeping that’s acceptable to everybody.”
Moscow’s continued resistance to European peacekeeping forces – seen by Ukraine as the only viable alternative to Nato membership for guaranteeing its security – is the latest sign of its reluctance to align with Trump’s efforts to swiftly end the war, raising questions about Washington’s ability to persuade Putin to compromise on some of his sweeping demands regarding Ukraine.
Two sources familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking told the Guardian that Putin remained committed to his sweeping conditions for signing any peace deal, which include limiting the size of Kyiv’s military, prohibiting foreign weapons on Ukrainian soil, ensuring Ukraine’s permanent neutrality, and maintaining influence over its political future.
Lavrov reiterated that Moscow still sought full control over the four Ukrainian regions it illegally annexed, despite not fully occupying all of their territory.
He also signalled that Moscow would insist on having a say over Ukraine’s political direction, suggesting that Russia sought a settlement that would make the remaining Ukrainian-controlled territory less hostile to Russia and Russian speakers. “What remains of Ukraine must also be freed from racist laws,” Lavrov said.
The Kremlin has long alleged that Ukraine’s government persecutes ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking citizens. This claim, bolstered by false narratives, served as a pretext for its unprovoked full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine has repeatedly denied Russian assertions it has repressed ethnic Russians and Russian speakers on its territory.
