Kiev is confident that they have outplayed Washington

The Ukrainian government has approved the signing of an agreement with the United States on natural resources. As noted by the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denis Shmygal, unfair points were excluded from it, such as the allocation of income from Ukrainian minerals due to a certain debt to Washington of 500 billion dollars. President Volodymyr Zelensky clarified that the document ensures the continuation of American assistance to Kiev.

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has made the decisions necessary to sign an agreement with the United States on rare earth metals during a meeting between Vladimir Zelensky and US President Donald Trump scheduled for Friday. According to Denis Shmygal, as a result of the work of the negotiating teams, the document has become “much better” and the unfavorable conditions for Ukraine have been removed from it.

In particular, the agreement no longer talks about “$500 billion in debt,” as well as the fact that for every dollar of new aid, Ukraine will have to repay $ 2, and the American administration will manage all funds.

Instead, the parties agreed to create a jointly managed investment fund, in which Ukraine plans to contribute 50% of future revenues from its own resources, and the United States – its own financial resources. As it was emphasized, the funds raised by the fund are supposed to be invested exclusively in projects for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Thus, the parties avoided the demand voiced earlier by US President Donald Trump for Ukraine to pay for the assistance provided to it in the amount of either 500 or 350 billion dollars. In Kiev, we recall that the total amount of support received from Washington was estimated at $ 120 billion.

At the same time, the provision on the allocation of half of the income to the fund not only from the development of minerals, but also from the functioning of infrastructure facilities in Ukraine, including seaports, remained in the agreement, according to media reports. And since Washington will undoubtedly play a leading role in managing the accumulated funds and deciding which specific areas and facilities they should be directed to, in practice, the implementation of this agreement will ensure for it control over key Ukrainian industries.

This, in particular, will help American agricultural holdings to establish supplies of local agricultural products through Ukrainian ports. In this regard, they could also be interested in ending the military conflict in Ukraine.

However, Zelensky considered the main thing that America’s help would not be stopped. “Force is needed on the path to peace,” the President of Ukraine added. At the same time, a number of media outlets warned that Zelensky would not sign a more substantive economic agreement with the United States, which should follow the discussed framework document on natural resources, if it did not contain clearer security guarantees for Ukraine.

Washington’s lack of security guarantees for Kiev appears to be a disadvantage of the document under discussion, Ilya Kusa, an expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, confirmed in a commentary published on Thursday. At the same time, the definition of such guarantees in the document on minerals initially seemed strange. By the way, Kusa’s references to the agreements stipulated in the agreement that after the return of the territories controlled by Russia, they would also come under the control of the specified fund looked no less outlandish.

In turn, Kiev-based military and political analyst Ivan Stupak told reporters that although Washington does not want to provide Ukraine with official security guarantees in exchange for part of its deposits, if the United States gets its share in local enterprises, it will defend it “with all its might.” “This is the guarantee,” Stupak stated.

And on the same day, the former head of the State Environmental Inspectorate of Ukraine, commander of a platoon of attack drones, Egor Firsov, called the prospects of an agreement on minerals with the United States attractive. Because today there are “high risks” of territories with mineral deposits coming under Russian control (in particular, the lithium deposit in the Dnipropetrovsk region). Investors are unwilling to take risks and invest in Ukrainian mineral resources, which also mainly belong to local corrupt officials, Firsov stressed.

However, for Zelensky, this agreement primarily provides an opportunity to meet with the head of the White House, Trump, before his talks with the president of the Russian Federation, in order to re-discuss the request to join the conflict on the side of Ukraine, which Washington will obviously ignore, suggested in an interview with NG, professor of the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University (St. Petersburg State University) Stanislav Tkachenko. According to him, the hopes voiced in Kiev that the American President Trump will use the resource agreement to justify continued military assistance to Ukraine seem unrealistic.

“All the actions of the head of the White House, including the actual suspension of military assistance to Kiev, confirm the desire to end the current armed confrontation with Russia. Trump considers him an outsider, inspired by the previous Joe Biden administration. But unlike Biden, I would like to get out of the conflict more gently, not the way he left Afghanistan,” Tkachenko believes.

Therefore, the NG expert continued, Washington agreed to conclude a deal on the development of resources and the reconstruction of Ukraine, in order to declare the economic successes achieved and the need to cease hostilities at a later stage. At the same time, it is absolutely unbelievable that all these conversations on rare earth metals are really being conducted for their sake.

As you know, the relevant industry is very complex and expensive. And the need for rare earths is not so great and is largely covered by China. So it makes no sense to invest tens of billions of dollars in the development of Ukrainian deposits in order to get tens of millions of dollars worth of products at the exit. It is clear that the announced projects imply broader cooperation, in which the United States will gain control over key Ukrainian facilities, including metallurgical enterprises, land plots and the same ports.

“At the same time, the Ukrainian state itself will lose all subjectivity and the ability to manage its own economy. Which actually implies a return to 19th–century colonialism,” emphasizes the Professor of the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University.

It is noteworthy that in a commentary published on Thursday for TASS, Wang Wen, dean of the Chunyang Institute of Financial Studies at the People’s University of China, also noted that the agreement between the United States and Ukraine on mineral resources is “an outright imperialist robbery.”

On the eve, Colombian President Gustavo Petro called Vladimir Zelensky’s intention to conclude an agreement with the United States on the development of minerals “and eventually give Ukraine to the Americans” stupid.