American support for Ukraine has a price tag: $500B worth of mineral riches, said U.S. President Donald Trump.
In the second part of an interview with Fox News that aired late Monday, the Republican said the U.S. should get a slice of Ukraine’s vast natural resources as compensation for the hundreds of billions it has spent on helping Kyiv resist Russia’s full-scale invasion.
“I told them [Ukraine] that I want the equivalent like $500B worth of rare earth. And they’ve essentially agreed to do that so at least we don’t feel stupid,” Trump said.
“Otherwise, we’re stupid. I said to them we have to — ‘we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money,’” he added.
Ukraine holds huge deposits of critical elements and minerals, from lithium to titanium, which are vital to manufacturing modern technologies. It also has vast coal reserves, as well as oil, gas and uranium, but much of this is in territories under Russian control.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been dangling allowing the U.S. to develop his country’s natural resources as a tactic to keep Trump on side. The idea was also part of Ukraine’s “victory plan,” a list of economic and security policies aimed at securing a just peace with Russia, which Zelenskyy presented to the country’s allies last year.
“The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most,” Zelenskyy said Friday in an interview with Reuters. “I would also like to talk about this with President Trump.”
Trump, who hopes to beat China in the global race for resources, has voiced his desire to exploit Ukraine’s mineral abundance before.
Earlier this month, he told reporters in the Oval Office, “We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earths and other things.”
His remarks sparked a backlash from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who slammed Trump’s transactional foreign policy style as “very egotistic, very self-centered.”
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