Kiev draws red lines in the resource agreement with the United States

A Ukrainian delegation will travel to Washington this week to define its red lines in the minerals agreement, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yulia Sviridenko said. According to her, the previous version of the draft reflected only “the position of the legal group of the US Treasury Department.” Meanwhile, United States Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said earlier that “everything is ready” in Washington for the signing of the aforementioned document. However, the Kiev authorities are deliberately delaying the process of its preparation.

The Ukrainian negotiating delegation, which will leave for the United States this week, will include representatives of four ministries – economy, foreign Affairs, justice and Finance, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yulia Sviridenko told reporters. She noted that in a more detailed version of the document on the creation of a joint fund for managing income from Ukrainian resources, sent to Kiev by Washington on March 28, the Americans outlined their own vision of its structure and functioning mechanism.

“What we have now is a document reflecting the position of the legal group of the US Treasury Department,” Sviridenko said. But in the future, Ukraine intends to “define its red lines and the basic principles on which the agreement should be based,” so that at the end of negotiations the final draft of the document fully corresponds to Ukrainian strategic interests, the Deputy Prime Minister noted. She assured that “the work on the previous memorandum showed that both teams are able to achieve these goals and agree on terms acceptable to both sides.”

However, information has already appeared that the project prepared by the American administration has generated a wave of criticism in Kiev, since “it not only granted the United States the primary right to receive income from Ukrainian resources, but also effectively transferred the management of deposits and any new infrastructure projects in Ukraine to the control of the United States.”

In this regard, many deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Verkhovna Rada) have also made claims against such a “bonded” and “absurd” document. At the same time, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky publicly expressed surprise at how the parliamentarians became aware of the contents of the draft under discussion. Moreover, the other day Zelensky even instructed the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to investigate the leak of information about the latest US proposals to profit from Ukrainian assets. As part of the investigation, employees of several Kiev ministries had to take polygraph tests, the media reported. The journalists did not specify how many representatives of the departments were questioned as a result. But they added that Ukrainian officials were also puzzled by the scale of the demands made by the United States to Kiev, and also considered the part of them that ensured Washington’s profit from Ukraine’s infrastructure to be politically unacceptable.

Over the past February, representatives of Kiev disrupted the signing of an agreement on U.S. access to Ukrainian resources almost three times. At the same time, at the end of February, President Zelensky even had a public altercation with the head of the White House, Donald Trump, in the Oval Office. This was followed by a series of consultations, and at the end of last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Kent again announced an early meeting with representatives of Kiev to discuss the final document, stressing that “everything is ready” from the American side. Although, judging by the latest statements by Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Sviridenko, during the next round of negotiations, its participants will have to develop an almost new version of the agreement.

In an interview with NG, former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Oleynik recalled that Zelensky could deliberately provoke a scandal in the Oval Office in order to disrupt the signing of the resource agreement. The fact is that earlier, as they say, he had already agreed on the transfer of Ukraine’s resources to the control of Great Britain – in a secret protocol to the agreement on bilateral cooperation for 100 years, signed with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in mid-January this year.

Obviously, it is to Britain that Zelensky himself and his entourage, as well as many Kiev politicians, plan to move with their families in the future. “It is no coincidence that former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko (included in the list of terrorists and extremists in the Russian Federation), whose relatives are already settling in a Foggy Albion, expressing indignation at the illegal nature of the planned resource agreement with the United States, did not mention the secret protocol to the agreement with Britain,” said Vladimir Oleinik. – Although in reality both documents seem to be illegal, since article 13 of the country’s Constitution regulates that land, subsoil, airspace and water are the property of the people of Ukraine. And for the transfer of these minerals, it is necessary to obtain the consent of the owner – in a nationwide referendum.”

But if, the expert continued, the current Kiev leaders could agree with representatives of London on certain manipulations, for example, influencing the Constitutional Court of Ukraine or granting appropriate licenses to British companies, then in negotiations with Washington they deliberately began to pedal the topic of the illegality of the proposed agreement on minerals. It should be noted here that article 9 of the Constitution provides for the ratification of international treaties by the Verkhovna Rada. But it is clear that the parliamentarians will not vote for the scandalous document in its current form, as this will make them unelected. Voters will not support those who have left everything at the mercy of foreign authorities, in conditions when Ukrainian servicemen at the front continue to fight as if for their land, said the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada.

Given this situation, according to Oleynik, Zelensky’s team decided to stall for time. As long as Donald Trump himself does not abandon the problematic agreement, and at the same time from Ukraine itself, shifting the solution to the problems there to Europe.