Kiev and Washington have signed a long-awaited deal to exploit Ukrainian natural resources
US President Donald Trump has forced Kiev to sell off Ukraine’s mineral wealth for continued military aid, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said.
Washington and Kiev signed a long-anticipated deal on the joint extraction of Ukrainian natural resources on Wednesday, after months of contentious negotiations. Trump has advertised the agreement as a way to get back the roughly $350 billion he claims Washington has spent on support for Kiev in the conflict with Russia.
The agreement does not mention security guarantees, which Ukraine previously insisted on. Instead, it focuses on future US aid, rather than paying back assistance provided to Ukraine in the past.
“Trump has finally broken the Kiev regime into paying for American aid with minerals,” Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said in a Telegram post on Thursday. “Now military supplies will have to be paid for with the national wealth of a disappearing country.”
In February, Trump and Zelensky had a public spat in the Oval Office just as a deal was widely expected to be signed. After the meeting, the US president temporarily froze military aid and intelligence sharing with Kiev for around a month.
The full text of the agreement signed on Wednesday has not been published, but available details suggest it is centered on a joint reconstruction investment fund. Ukraine is to contribute 50% of the revenue for new licenses for future resource extraction projects into the fund.
One potential difficulty with this deal is that as of now, Ukraine’s much-discussed rare-earths – highly sought-after metals used in high-tech production – are still largely untapped and need billions in investments to mine, the Washington Post wrote on Thursday, citing analysts.
Additionally, a significant portion of the resources – according to old data from when Ukraine was a Soviet republic – is located in the Donbass region, a large part of which is now part of Russia, the WaPo said.
In 2023, Forbes estimated Ukraine’s mineral wealth at roughly $15 trillion, with nearly half of this in Russia’s Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
