President Trump on Wednesday confirmed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be visiting the US on Friday to sign a deal on Ukraine’s rare earth minerals and other natural resources.
The deal will establish a fund where Ukraine will put 50% of its proceeds from rare earth minerals and other resources, including natural gas and oil, that will be used for investment projects in Ukraine. Exactly how much of the fund will be owned by the US is unclear and is expected to be worked out in follow-on agreements.
According to a draft of the agreement obtained by CNN, the deal says that the US “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace,” but it does not explicitly provide any security guarantees.
Zelensky acknowledged that the deal doesn’t give “concrete security guarantees” and said it was a “framework” for the future of the relationship between the US and Ukraine, which he plans to discuss with Trump on Friday.
Trump told reporters during his first cabinet meeting that the deal had “automatic security” for Ukraine because “nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there, and so we’ll be there in that way.”
A day earlier, Trump said that the deal will give Ukraine the “right to fight on” and that the US may continue supplying weapons for the proxy war until a peace deal is reached with Russia.
When asked how long the US will be sending military equipment to Ukraine, Trump said, “Well, it could go forward for a while, maybe until we have a deal with Russia. Look, we need to have a deal with Russia. Otherwise, it’s going to continue. But now when Americans put up there money … we’re getting our money back in some form. But it could go on for a while, or it could be settled quickly.”
The president also bragged about the fact that he was the first to send Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine during his first term, which marked a major escalation of the US involvement in the conflict at the time. “In fact, I was the one that gave them the Javelins. You remember the famous Javelins? That was me, that wasn’t Obama, it wasn’t Biden, it wasn’t anybody else, it was me,” he said.
