Kiev and Washington are engaged in negotiations on a deal that would hand the United States priority access to Ukraine’s mineral reserves, a source in Kiev said on Friday, despite a dramatic row between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump.
Expressing anger in Washington, Kiev rejected the Trump team’s first attempt to reach a deal for Ukraine’s natural resources, saying the proposal did not include security guarantees for Kiev.
Since then, Trump and Zelensky have engaged in a bitter public feud, with Trump claiming that Russia was to blame for the invasion of Ukraine and that Zelensky is deeply unpopular with his own people.
Frustrated by the Kremlin’s repeated false narratives, Zelensky said Trump had fallen prey to Russian “disinformation.” Despite the tensions, talks on a potential resource deal were “ongoing” on Friday, a senior Ukrainian official with knowledge of the matter said.
“There is a continuous exchange of drafts, we sent another one yesterday,” the source said, adding that Ukraine is now awaiting a US response. Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, publicly told Kiev on Thursday to “look seriously at and sign that agreement.”
Trump wants to give access to American companies as compensation for tens of billions of dollars in aid distributed to Ukraine under his predecessor, Joe Biden. But Ukraine is seeking security guarantees from the United States in exchange for signing away valuable rights to vast amounts of its natural resources and vital minerals.
Ukraine is pushing for NATO membership or the deployment of Western troops and advanced equipment as part of any comprehensive ceasefire agreement with Russia. Zelenskyy said earlier this week that Ukraine would not be “sold” in any deal with the United States.
