The mineral agreement signed between the United States and Ukraine on Wednesday could bring incalculable money to a joint investment fund between the two countries that would help reconstruct Ukraine when the war with Russia ends.
But Ukraine without exploiting resources that are the subject of the agreement will take years to extract and obtain profits. And those could stop delivering the type of wealth that President Trump has said for a long time that they would.
It is not yet clear how the nine -page agreement, whose Ukraine text made public on Thursday, will work in practice. It is necessary to resolve many details, but the agreement will establish an investment fund, jointly managed by Kyiv and Washington.
Althegh, the Trump administration had wanted kyiv to use its mineral wealth to pay US military assistance, the final text eliminates the idea of treating that help as debt. The agreement also seemed to maintain the fact that Ukraine joined Ukraine to join the European Union, a measure that Neith the United States or Russia has opposed.
A security guarantee was not mentioned, that Ukraine had tried to prevent Russia from regrouping after any cessation of fire. But the agreement means that the United States could send more military aid to Ukraine if a peace agreement is not reached.
The highly anticipated firm of the agreement has almost surely achieved something that seemed almost impossible two months ago: it has linked Mr. Trump to the future of Ukraine.
“This agreement clearly indicates to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process focused on a free, sovereign and prosperous long -term Ukraine,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Besent, announcing the agreement on Wednesday.
Analysts agreed on Thursday that the agreement could guarantee the interest of Mr. Trump in Ukraine now that it is publicly invested.
“He is a businessman, he always makes the calculations,” Volodymyr Fesesko, a leading political analyst in kyiv, said. “His commercial mentality shapes his approach to politics. Therefore, his motivation in the agreement could help maintain American interest in Ukraine. How will it work in practice, only time will say it.”
The Parliament of Ukraine still has to ratify the agreement, which will probably happen in the next 10 days, authorities said on Thursday.
In the end, it seems that Ukraine managed to get something he wanted, but not everything. Notable omission was the absence of a security guarantee.
“The agreement has changed significantly,” Zensky said in a social media post on Thursday night. Hi, he added: “Now it is an agreement truly the same as it creates an opportunity for investments in Ukraine.”
The investment fund will be financed with income from new projects in critical minerals, oil and gas, and not of projects that are already working. In theory, it would be a 50-50 association in which Ukraine and the United States would put the same amount in the background and execute it equally.
Anna Skorokhod, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament of an opposition political party, said he was informed about the agreement at a government meeting on Thursday. Mrs. Skorokhod said it was tolerated that Americans would put money in the background, and the equivalent amount of dollars of what any future military help to Ukraine would cost.
The Ukrainians will put money at the bottom of the mining licenses issued for investors and royalties of the mineral resources developed by virtue of the agreement. Half of that money will go to the Ukrainian budget; Half will go to the joint investment fund.
Mrs. Skorokhod said she doubted support the agreement because she lacked details. “It looks good, but we don’t know if it’s true or it’s a fairy tale for us to vote,” he said.
The fund would be established by both governments and administered by a limited liability company formed in Delaware and directed by three Ukrainians and three Americans, Skorokhod said. The profits would go to Recomkd Ukraine after the war during the first 10 years; After that, it is not clear what would happen to the profits.
The final terms will be detailed in future agreements.
The signing of the agreement in the Centenary in the position of Mr. Trump was the last turn in his always changing focus on the war, which Russia began with its large -scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Trump has falsely blamed kyiv for instigating war and seemed to find more relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin or Russia than with anyone in Ukraine. He has repeatedly questioned why the United States became kyiv’s greatest ally, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and has not hidden his irritation with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine and kyiv’s requests to obtain more military assistance.
The NADIR of the relationship between Ukraine and the United States occurred on February 28, when Mr. Zensky and Trump were expected to sign a mineral agreement of participation in profits in the Oval office. The meeting was a disaster. Trump and vice president JD Vance publicly punished Mr. Zelensky, who was abruptly asked to leave the White House. In the consequences, the Trump administration temporarily suspended military aid and the exchange of intelligence with Ukraine.
But Mr. Trump has also repeatedly said hey to finish the war, just campaigning in the promise that he would do so in 24 hours. Since then he said he was not literal of bees.
As the Trump administration has pressed Russia and Ukraine to agree on a peace agreement, or at least, a 30-day cessation-Ucraine has tried to look at the precise party. Zelensky, who has worked to soften relations with the Trump administration after the debacle of the Oval office, immediately accepts the idea of an unconditional truce of 30 days; Mr. Putin did not.
Even so, for Ukraine, the mineral agreement offered an opportunity for some leverage, even when critics described it as extortion.
The Ukrainian government initially highlighted the country’s mineral holdings to the Trump administration, hoping to generate some investments and help solidify the relationship between the two countries.
Ukrainian officials say that the country has deposits of more than 20 critical minerals; A consulting company valued them in several billion dollars. But minerals may not be easy to extract, and the maps of the Soviet era that identify the locations of critical deposits have never modernized the legs or necessarily examined completely.
Kyiv had desperately wanted the agreement included a child guarantee child from the United States. Without one, the officials feared, Russia could violate any fire, what Moscow has done before.
Trump, he thought, has said that having a joint investment fund with the United States would be a guarantee of security in their own right: if US companies and the United States government were invested in the future of Ukraine, that only dissuades.
In many ways, despite the opposite, the agreement signed on Wednesday with little fanfare resembled the one that collapsed in February.
The reaction to the agreement was mixed in Ucrine on Thursday.
Vira Zhdan, 36, who lives in the Ukrainian city in southern Zaporizhzhia, who is often under a Russian attack, said the agreement unfairly diverts money from Ukrainian resources to US investors.
“These are traps that surround us and drag our country to a deeper and deeper well,” he said. “We live here and now, but it will be our descendants who have to deal with the consequence. This, without a doubt, will leave them a significant mark.”
But Svitlana Mahmudova-Bardadyn, 46, who lives in the sumy region near the border with Russia, said he expected the agreement to mean that Ukraine would fly more support weapons in the United States. He also said that he hoped that “this large -scale war finally ends, that things will improve for us.”
Everything that remained to be Thursday, with the text of the agreement to vague and Ukrainian officials who remained to mom in any promise that could have made the leg.
On the other hand, the language of the agreement referred to “an expression of a broader long -term strategic alignment” between the two countries “, a tangible demonstration of the support of the United States of the United States” for the safety and reconstruction of Ukraine. And it made it clear who could not win.
The agreement says that the United States and Ukraine want to ensure that countries “that have acted announcing Ukraine in the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine” once peace is reached, in other words, Russia.
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn Contributed reports.
