Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is trying to “back out” of a minerals agreement with the United States, President Donald Trump said Sunday.
“I think Zelenskyy, by the way, he’s trying to back out of the rare earth deal, and if he does that, he’s got some problems — big, big problems,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
“We made a deal on rare earths, and now he’s saying, ‘well, you know, I want to renegotiate the deal.’ He wants to be a member of NATO. Well, he was never going to be a member of NATO. He understands that, so, if he’s looking to renegotiate the deal, he’s got big problems,” Trump said.
Zelenskyy on Friday emphasized that Ukraine will not accept a minerals agreement that would jeopardize its accession to the European Union.
“Nothing that could endanger … Ukraine’s accession to the EU can be accepted,” he said at a press conference in Kyiv.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha doubled down on that condition Sunday when he said Ukraine will never accept anything that would make the country weak.
“We can see this Russian strategy and will never accept anything that leaves Ukraine weak or defenseless,” Sybiha said. “To the contrary, a real and fair peace requires strong and long-term security guarantees to preserve it.”
The comments come on the back of Washington’s latest minerals offer to Kyiv, which would grant the United States access to Ukraine’s oil, gas and minerals through a joint investment fund that would split the revenue of those projects between the two countries.
Zelenskyy said that the latest draft of the deal included “many new provisions that were not previously discussed,” as well as “some aspects that had already been rejected by both sides,” according to Ukrainian media.
Bloomberg reported Friday that Ukraine will ask for changes in the deal that will commit the U.S. to more investment as well as for further clarifications on how the joint reconstruction fund would work.
Meanwhile, Russian state media reported that Moscow and Washington have started discussing their own rare earth minerals deal.
“Rare earth metals are an important area for cooperation, and we have certainly started discussions about various rare earth metals and projects in Russia,” Putin’s envoy on international economic and investment cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev, told Izvestia.
The U.S. and Ukraine were originally set to sign a minerals deal on Feb. 28, but that fell through following a public spat in the White House during which U.S. Vice President JD Vance accused Zelenskyy of being ungrateful.
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