With Volodymyr Zelenskyy balking at Donald Trump’s bid for Ukraine’s critical rare earth minerals, the Kremlin is attempting to persuade the United States president that Russia can offer a better deal.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin told state media Monday evening, “We are ready to work with our partners, including the Americans” to access mineral reserves — including in Russian-occupied Ukraine. He also suggested Russia could resume selling aluminum to the U.S., saying Moscow was ready to supply “about 2 million tons to the American market.”
The offer came amid an attempt by the Trump administration to gain preferential access to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Ukraine’s critical minerals as payback for previously supplied aid, while offering no clear security guarantees or prospects of future funds in return.
Speaking in a televised interview after convening a meeting on development of the rare earth metals industry on Monday, Putin said Ukraine’s potential critical minerals deal with the U.S. “does not concern us” — but claimed Moscow had more to offer Trump than Kyiv did.
“We would be ready to cooperate with our American partners … if they showed interest in working together,” Putin said, adding that Russia has “an order of magnitude more resources of this kind than Ukraine.”
He name-checked mineral reserves in Russia’s north, the Caucasus and the far east — as well as in Donbas, a Ukrainian region occupied by Russian forces.
“Regarding new territories,” Putin said, referring to parts of Ukraine that Russia has seized, “We are ready to attract foreign partners — and in our so-called new historical territories, which have returned to the Russian Federation, there are also certain reserves there. We are ready to work with our foreign partners, including the Americans, there.”
To sweeten the deal further, Putin said Russia would consider working with the U.S. to produce aluminum. He noted that if American companies work with Moscow, they will “make good money, and the corresponding volumes of aluminum will enter the domestic market at absolutely acceptable market prices.”
The Trump administration has vowed to end the Russia-Ukraine war as soon as possible, while recently echoing the Kremlin’s narrative about Kyiv provoking Moscow into starting the conflict.
On Monday, the EU offered its own minerals deal to Ukraine, with European Commissioner for Industrial Strategy Stéphane Séjourné pointedly saying during a trip to Kyiv: “The added value Europe offers is that we will never demand a deal that’s not mutually beneficial.”
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