Ukraine agrees minerals deal with US

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Kyiv has agreed terms with Washington on a minerals deal that Ukrainian officials hope will improve relations with the Trump administration and pave the way for a long-term US security commitment.

Ukrainian officials say Kyiv is now ready to sign the agreement on jointly developing its mineral resources, including oil and gas, after the US dropped demands for a right to $500bn in potential revenue from exploiting the resources.

Although the text lacks explicit security guarantees, the officials argued that they had negotiated far more favourable terms and depicted the deal as a way of broadening the relationship with the US to shore up Ukraine’s prospects after three years of war.

“The minerals agreement is only part of the picture. We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and justice minister who has led the negotiations, told the Financial Times on Tuesday.

The original draft’s highly onerous terms — which President Donald Trump presented as a means of Ukraine repaying the US for military and financial aid since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion — provoked outrage in Kyiv and other European capitals.

After President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected that initial text last week, Trump called him a “dictator” and appeared to blame Ukraine for starting the war.

The final version of the agreement, dated February 24 and seen by the FT, would establish a fund into which Ukraine would contribute 50 per cent of proceeds from the “future monetisation” of state-owned mineral resources, including oil and gas, and associated logistics. The fund would invest in projects in Ukraine.

It excludes mineral resources that already contribute to Ukrainian government coffers, meaning it would not cover the existing activities of Naftogaz or Ukrnafta, Ukraine’s largest gas and oil producers.

However, the agreement omits any reference to US security guarantees which Kyiv had originally insisted on in return for agreeing to the deal. It also leaves crucial questions such as the size of the US stake in the fund and the terms of “joint ownership” deals to be hashed out in follow-up agreements.

After three years in which the US was Kyiv’s primary military aid donor, Trump has overturned Washington’s policy by opening bilateral talks with Russia, without any European allies or Ukraine at the table.

Ukrainian officials said the deal had been approved by the justice, economy and foreign ministers, and held out the prospect of Zelenskyy travelling to the White House in the coming weeks for a signing ceremony with Trump.

“This will be a chance for the president to discuss what the bigger picture is. And then after it, we will be able to think of the next steps,” said one official.

The Trump administration’s initial sweeping proposal called for a reconstruction investment fund in which the US “maintains 100 per cent financial interest”. Ukraine would contribute 50 per cent of the fund’s revenues from mineral resource extraction, including oil and gas and associated infrastructure, up to a maximum of $500bn.

Those terms, described as unacceptable by Ukrainian officials, have been removed from the final draft.

The mandate for the fund to invest in Ukraine is a further change Kyiv had sought. The document states the US will back Ukraine’s economic development into the future.

Ukrainian officials added that the deal was just a “framework agreement” and that no revenues would change hands until the fund was in place, allowing them time to iron out any potential disagreements. Among the outstanding issues is to agree the jurisdiction of the agreement.

Zelenskyy’s government will also have to seek approval from Ukraine’s parliament, where opposition MPs have signalled they will at the very least have a heated debate before ratifying such a deal.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday that it was “critical that this deal is signed”, though she did not provide an update on the talks.

Additional reporting by James Politi in Washington