Three months ago, Ukraine’s president was sitting in the White House’s Oval Office, berated by U.S. President Donald Trump and his vice president for balking at a major deal giving Washington privileged access to Kyiv’s lucrative mineral wealth.
The blow-up threatened a decisive, and possibly catastrophic, disruption in U.S. support for Ukraine’s war-fighting effort.
On April 30, however, after weeks of fraught, behind-the-scenes negotiations -- and a remarkable face-to-face Vatican meeting between Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy-- Ukrainian and U.S. officials announced a major new agreement on access to those same minerals.
That includes subsoil elements that are critical to cutting-edge technologies -- electric car batteries, smart phones, computer chips -- something Washington has prioritized getting access to.
The deal is notably different from the original proposal, which Ukrainian officials complained heavily favored U.S. interests.
“While more favorable to Ukraine than earlier iterations, the deal’s effectiveness hinges on long-term peace and stable investment conditions,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an analysis of the deal.
“Key barriers include outdated geological surveys, degraded energy infrastructure, and unresolved security risks.”
Added Oleksiy Yizhak, an expert at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Kyiv think tank: "The agreement looks, in my opinion, quite reasonable, not at all like the one that was initially voiced by the United States and that caused a very negative reaction both in Ukraine and among Ukraine's friends.”
So what’s in the deal exactly?
An Equal Partnership?
At the heart of the 11-page agreement is a joint investment fund that is intended to help rebuild Ukraine once the Russian invasion, now in its fourth year, ends. Ukraine will contribute 50 percent of all revenues from the sale of new minerals, as well as oil and gas projects, under the deal.
Ukraine’s economy minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, said the agreement guarantees Kyiv retains full ownership and control over “all resources on our territory and in our territorial waters.”
That’s a crucial element that had been lacking in earlier negotiations, and that prompted strong pushback from Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials, who said it would violate the country’s constitution.
"The economic agreement is, of course, not bad, but first, it still needs to be ratified by parliament; second, there are two other documents that must also be reviewed and adopted, though without parliamentary ratification,” Ihor Reiterovych, a Ukrainian political analyst, told Current Time.
“And while it’s all well and good for the economy, it won’t stop the war for now,” he said.
Ukraine’s parliament could vote on ratifying the deal as early as May 8.
What About Those Rare Earth
The fund’s investments center on Ukraine’s mineral resources; the text actually specifies nearly six dozen “natural resource relevant assets.”
Ukraine is a major oil and gas producer, as well as coal, though most of its coal fields are currently located in territories under Russian occupation. It also holds a substantial amount of other important industrial minerals: things like titanium – used in airplane manufacturing – and uranium – used for nuclear power.
It also may have critical amount of so-called “rare earths.” These are hard-to-find and hard-to-extract minerals that are used in things like batteries, smart phones, computer chips, and other technology.
The agreement calls for not only investing in extraction of the minerals, but also related infrastructure and processing facilities. That could include port facilities, to help exporting the materials. Investment decisions will be made jointly – by US and Ukrainian officials – and made only within Ukraine itself.
US companies get favorable treatment for participation in tenders, auctions, and other negotiations, under the deal, and the revenues generated by the fund will also be tax-exempt.
Notably, Svyrydenko, said, the agreement excludes two major state-owned resource companies: Ukrnafta, which produces oil and gas, and Energoatom, which owns and operates the country’s nuclear power plants.
"If we are talking about American investors coming, investing additional funds, investing technology, and receiving half of the revenues from production for this, this is not a new idea in Ukrainian commercial law,” Yizhak told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
“Will this be enough for the full restoration of Ukraine? Well, it's hard to say,” he said. “I think that for the full restoration of Ukraine, much more is needed than can be earned from this agreement. But if we talk about it, is 50/50 normal? Yes, that’s normal.”
“The agreement is a strong signal that the Trump administration is embedding minerals into its foreign policy,” CSIS said in its analysis.
"The investment-for-minerals structure of the deal aligns well with President Trump’s foreign policy ethos, which has favored a transactional approach to deal-making.”
What’s NOT In The Deal
Even before he took office in January, Trump complained that U.S. support for Ukraine was a boondoggle, claiming Kyiv owed the United States as much as $500 billion. Early on in the talks over the minerals deal, Trump suggested that the agreement could be structured as compensation for U.S. weaponry deliveries.
That stance, plus Trump’s longstanding misgivings about Zelenskyy, was partly what led to the February 28 meltdown, where Zelenskyy and Trump, along with Vice President JD Vance, had a shouting match, accusing Zelenskyy of being ungrateful and disrespectful.
Since the Russia launched its all-out invasion in February 2022, Washington has provided more than $174 billion in aid to Ukraine, according to the Congressional Research Service. Most of that is for weaponry, which Ukrainian troops have relied heavily on to push back on Russia’s advances.
The new agreement contains no stipulation that Ukraine will compensate Washington for past weapons deliveries.
It also says that future U.S. military supplies – weapons, ammunition, or training – will be calculated as a contribution to the joint fund.
Also not in the deal: security guarantees for Ukraine.
Zelenskyy had pushed the United States, and other European allies, for some sort of explicit commitment to come to Kyiv’s aid in the future, once the Russian war does finally end. That even included future NATO membership, though the Trump administration has decidedly poured cold water on that.
Still, some NATO allies are considering a “reassurance force” – essentially, a quasi-peacekeeping force as well.
Zelenskyy had hoped a mineral deal would include a security commitment from the Trump administration. There is none.
It does, however, state U.S. “support for Ukraine’s security, prosperity, reconstruction, and integration into global economic frameworks,” and a “long-term strategic alignment” between Washington and Kyiv.
“The main thing in this agreement is that the possibilities have been unlocked, albeit on a commercial basis, to purchase critical items that are needed,” Mykhaylo Podolyak, a top aide in Zelenskyy’s presidential office, told Current Time.
“We need to scale up strikes on the European part of Russia; when countries, including the United States, finally understand that soft diplomacy towards Russia does not work."
The deal comes at a time when the Trump administration pushes ahead with efforts to resolve the Ukraine war. The lead US envoy has presented the Kremlin with a list of proposals, which Ukraine and many supporters say is skewed toward Moscow.
While the Kremlin downplayed the minerals deal, Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected lawmaker, called it “The Big Deal” and said it was bad for Moscow.
“The fact is that the Big Deal will shift the US position away from Russia and towards Zelenskyy,” he said in a post on Telegram.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who signed the deal along with Svyrydenko, said it sent a clear signal to Moscow.
“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” he said in a statement.
