Ukraine Rejects U.S. Demand for Half of Its Mineral Resources

 

Ukraine Rejects U.S. Demand for Half of Its Mineral Resources

President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly faulted the American proposal because it did not include security guarantees.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last week during a meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.Credit...Tetiana Dzhafarova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, rejected an offer by the Trump administration to relinquish half of the country’s mineral resources in exchange for U.S. support, according to five people briefed on the proposal or with direct knowledge of the talks.

The unusual deal would have granted the United States a 50 percent interest in all of Ukraine’s mineral resources, including graphite, lithium and uranium, according to two European officials. But it was unclear whether this was meant as compensation only for past American support to Kyiv’s war effort against Russian invaders, or if it would also come in exchange for future military and financial assistance.

On Sunday, the U.S. national security adviser, Mike Waltz, indicated it was at least partly for past support. “The American people deserve to be recouped, deserve to have some kind of payback for the billions they have invested in this war,” he was quoted as saying. “I think that Zelensky would be very wise to enter into this agreement with the United States.”

A Ukrainian official and an energy expert briefed on the proposal said that the Trump administration sought not only Ukraine’s minerals but additional natural resources, including oil and gas. The proposal, they said, would entitle the United States to half of Ukraine’s resource earnings — funds that are today mostly invested in the country’s military and defense production.

Mr. Zelensky, who has shown openness to leveraging Ukraine’s mineral resources in negotiations with allies, said he rejected the deal because it did not tie resource access to U.S. security guarantees for Kyiv in its fight against Russia.

Negotiations are continuing, according to a second Ukrainian official, who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the talks. But the expansiveness of the proposal, and the tense negotiations around it, demonstrate the widening chasm between Kyiv and Washington over both continued U.S. support and a potential end to the war.

The request for half of Ukraine’s minerals was made on Wednesday, when the U.S. Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, met with Mr. Zelensky in Kyiv, the first visit by a Trump administration official to Ukraine. The Treasury Department declined to comment about any negotiation.

After seeing the proposal, the Ukrainians decided to review the details and provide a counterproposal when Mr. Zelensky visited the Munich Security Conference on Friday and met with Vice President JD Vance, according to the second Ukrainian official.

It is not clear if a counterproposal was presented. But Mr. Zelensky, speaking to reporters in Munich on Saturday, acknowledged he had rejected a proposal from the Trump administration. He did not specify what the terms of the deal were, other than that it had not included security guarantees.

“I don’t see this connection in the document,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s not ready to protect us, our interests.”

A security guarantee is key, because Ukrainians believe the United States and Britain have failed to live up to their obligations to protect the country under an agreement signed at the end of the Cold War, when Ukraine gave up the Russian nuclear weapons on its territory.

European diplomats had another objection. They complained that the offer reeked of colonialism, an era when Western countries exploited smaller or weaker nations for commodities.

The Ukrainian official and the energy expert briefed on Mr. Bessent’s offer said the proposal gave the United States a claim to half of Ukraine’s earnings from resource extraction as well as the sale of new extraction licenses.

In the first half of last year, Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas giant, reported a profit exceeding half a billion dollars.

The Ukrainian official said that, under the proposal, the United States would reinvest a portion of the profit it would receive into Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. The proposal also states that the United States would have priority in purchasing Ukrainian mineral exports, ahead of other buyers, according to the Ukrainian official.

Ukraine has 109 significant mineral deposits, including those with ores of titanium, lithium and uranium, according to a list compiled by the Kyiv School of Economics, in addition to oil and natural gas fields. Some, though, are in territory already under Russian occupation or close to the front line.

Their value is uncertain. Apart from the risks of a repeat Russian invasion after a cease-fire — a risk a deal with the United States is intended to reduce — deeply entrenched problems in Ukraine’s business climate have hobbled investment for much of the country’s post-independence history.

These include arcane regulation and insider dealing by Ukrainian businessmen and politicians, which could limit any profits from the arrangement. Even before the war, few investors were takers on Ukrainian mining deals.

But there is precedent for Ukraine to mix security and business with the United States under Mr. Trump. In his first term, in 2017, he struck a deal for Ukraine to buy coal from Pennsylvania to replace coal from mines in Ukraine lost under Russian occupation after the 2014 invasion.

Kostiantyn Yelisieiev, a former diplomat and the deputy chief of staff under Ukraine’s president at the time the agreement was struck, recalled that the deal had allowed Mr. Trump to declare that he had saved jobs in Pennsylvania, a swing state. For Kyiv, the agreement opened the door for Mr. Trump to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine with the approval for sales of Javelin anti-tank missiles.

At the time, Ukrainian officials saw it as a success, Mr. Yelisieiev said. “It confirmed that Trump is not a person of values, but a person of interests and money,” and that Ukraine could find a way to work with him on security, he said.

But the deal under discussion now, he said, furthers that approach in ways that could hand Russia a propaganda win by casting the war as a battle for natural resources, not Ukrainian independence or democracy.

“It’s more important to say this is about protecting democracies and defeating Putin,” he said.

An earlier version of this article included a quote from an account on X in which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent supposedly said the Ukraine mineral deal was payback for previous U.S. support. That account has since been suspended.