Zelensky agrees to natural resources deal after US removes more ‘onerous’ terms

US President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would visit the White House on Friday to sign an agreement that will see Washington and Kyiv jointly develop Ukraine’s natural resources.

“I hear that he’s coming on Friday. Certainly it’s okay with me if he’d like to. And he would like to sign it together with me”, Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Tuesday, adding that the potentially “trillion-dollar deal” would grant Ukraine “the right to fight on” as the Russian invasion entered its fourth year.

On Tuesday evening, The Financial Times (FT) reported that the US had dropped the more “onerous” terms of the deal it initially demanded Ukraine sign, which would have seen Kyiv paying up to $500 billion in revenues from its natural resources to Washington as “repayment” for US aid since the start of the war, despite that being more than twice what it has provided to the country to date.

According to the final agreement, the two countries will establish a jointly owned fund into which Ukraine will contribute 50% of proceeds from the “future monetisation” of its state-owned mineral resources including oil and gas, the FT said. In return, the fund will invest in projects to rebuild Ukraine’s economy and infrastructure.

While the deal still does not include the explicit US security guarantees for Ukraine that Zelensky insisted on, according to the FT, its improved terms would serve as a way of “broadening the relationship with the US to shore up Ukraine’s prospects after three years of war”.

“The minerals agreement is only part of the picture. We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture”, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanyshina told the FT.

Zelensky’s refusal to simply sign the deal presented to him earlier this month led to a souring of relations between Kyiv and Washington and a public war of words between Trump and Zelensky, whom Trump labelled a “dictator” while blaming Kyiv for starting the war. Zelensky remained steadfast on his refusal to sign the deal, which he said would have left “10 generations of Ukrainians” in debt.

On Monday, Vladimir Putin appeared to float a similar deal between the US and Russia, telling state television that Moscow was ready to work with “foreign partners” including the US to develop deposits of rare earth metals in Russia and the Russian-occupied regions of eastern Ukraine.