Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected a proposal for the US to take ownership of 50% of the rights to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals and other natural resources, Financial Times reported on Saturday.
The report said the offer was made when US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent visited Ukraine last week. While Zelensky rejected the initial offer, he has expressed openness to a rare earth deal with the US and is reportedly working to negotiate a better deal.
White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said that by rejecting the US proposal, Zelensky was “being short-sighted about the excellent opportunity the Trump administration has presented to Ukraine.”
Zelensky’s main demand for a deal is for robust security guarantees from the US and Europe. A person familiar with the proposal delivered by Bessent told Financial Times it only referenced the US getting mineral access for past military assistance and didn’t include an offer for future US support.
NBC News reported that Trump administration officials have suggested an openness to deploying US troops to Ukraine to guard US-owned natural resources if there is a peace deal with Russia, although Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ruled out the idea of a US deployment to the country.
Russia has also said it wouldn’t accept any presence of foreign troops, saying peacekeepers could only be deployed under a mandate from the UN Security Council.
President Trump has repeatedly called for a rare earth minerals deal with Ukraine, saying he needs to “secure” the money the US has poured into the proxy war. In a recent interview with Fox News, the president suggested he wanted $500 billion in natural resources from the country.
Over the weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) credited himself with convincing Trump to pursue Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. “The main thing for me is that Ukraine has value — literally has value,” Graham told POLITICO. “Trump now sees Ukraine differently … I said these people are sitting on a gold mine … I showed him a map, ‘look!’”
Back in 2019, Graham convinced Trump to keep US troops in Syria by showing the president a map of oil fields in US-occupied areas. Trump later said that he decided to stay in Syria to “secure the oil.”
