President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine would not accept any mineral rights deal that threatened its integration with the EU but said it was too early to pass judgement on a dramatically expanded minerals deal proposed by Washington.
The Ukrainian leader said that Kyiv’s lawyers needed to review the draft before he could say more about the US offer, a summary of which suggested the US was demanding all Ukraine’s natural resources income for years.
He also said Kyiv would not recognise billions of dollars of past US aid as loans, though he did not say whether such a demand featured in the latest draft version received by a top government official.
Zelenskiy did say, however, that the text was ‘entirely different’ from an earlier framework agreement that he had been set to sign with Donald Trump before their talks descended into acrimony last month.
“The framework has been changed. Let us study this framework and then we can talk,” he told a news conference in Kyiv.
The latest US proposal would require Kyiv to send Washington all profit from a fund controlling Ukrainian resources until Ukraine had repaid all American wartime aid, plus interest, according to a summary reviewed by Reuters.
Zelenskiy, who has repeatedly emphasised the need for strong relations with the White House, appeared to be alluding to this last element when he said Kyiv did not view past assistance as something that now needed to be repaid.
Navigating an acceptable path forward on issues like this is a major challenge for Zelenskiy whose rift with Trump last month saw Washington cut off flows of previously agreed military assistance and stop intelligence sharing.
It is also a highly sensitive diplomatic juncture with Trump trying to rapidly end the fighting with Russia, while reorienting Washington’s policy towards endorsing Moscow’s narrative about its three-year-old war in Ukraine.
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