Ukraine has “essentially agreed” to give the U.S. access to $500 billion worth of rare earth minerals to recoup its aid funding, President Donald Trump has said.
Speaking in a Fox News interview on Monday, Trump said Kyiv may or may not make a peace deal with Moscow, “they may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. But we’re going to have all this money in (Ukraine) and I say, I want it back.”
“I told them that I want the equivalent of like $500 billion worth of rare earth (minerals), and they’ve essentially agreed to do that,” he said.
On Friday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Reuters he wanted to “do a deal” with Trump in return for continued military support and security guarantees.
“If we are talking about a deal, then let's do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskyy told Reuters, explaining that what he proposed was a partnership in the exploitation of Ukraine’s rare earth resources.
“The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most,” he said. “And they should have this priority, and they will. I would also like to talk about this with President Trump.”
Peace prospects
On the prospects for a peace agreement with Russia, Trump said: “I think it’s going to happen. I think we’ve made tremendous progress in the last week. We’re dealing with the Russians, we’re dealing with the Ukrainians, I think there’s going to be something done, I hope.”
Washington’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, is scheduled to visit Kyiv on February 20 and is believed to be preparing a number of options for a peace deal, the Kyiv Independent reported.
President Zelenskyy is also scheduled to meet U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference this week.
Trump told the New York Post on Friday that he had spoken to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and that Russian officials want to meet with American negotiators.
Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz, said there are “a lot of sensitive conversations going on” and that senior U.S. diplomats would be in Europe in the coming week “talking through the details of how to end this war, and that will mean getting both sides to the table.”
On the ground in Ukraine, the war continues with authorities imposing power restrictions on Tuesday following Russian strikes on the country’s gas infrastructure.
“The enemy launched an attack on gas infrastructure overnight,” Reuters reported the energy minister as posting on social media. “As of this morning, the energy sector continues to be under attack.”
