USA and Ukraine close to deal on rare earths, according to Ukraine
Ukraine wants to give the USA part of its rare earth deposits in return for US support. There was much controversy about the deal - now an agreement is apparently in sight.
According to the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine is in the final stages of talks with the USA on a raw materials agreement on rare earths. The agreement is intended to give Washington a share in the country's natural resources. Stefanishyna announced this on Monday in the online service X. The talks were "constructive" and the new draft of the agreement is almost ready.
Ukraine is now waiting for a response from the USA , reports the news portal Bloomberg , citing an internal source. As part of the minerals agreement, the United States is committed to a "free, sovereign and secure" Ukraine and to a "lasting peace", according to the document, which Bloomberg is said to have seen.
The US would also agree to a "permanent partnership" between Washington and Kyiv and express its intention to invest in Ukraine, the draft continues. Those who opposed Ukraine during the war should not benefit from the country's reconstruction. The exact text of the agreement, however, has not yet been finalized and could still change, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
According to the report, US President Donald Trump considers the agreement to be an integral part of the plan to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Efforts to reach such an agreement recently gained momentum with the first high-level talks between Washington and Moscow - without the participation of Ukraine. During the election campaign, the current US president promised a rapid end to the war.
The Trump administration recently proposed that Ukraine give half of its rare earths to the United States in return for US support. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy apparently rejected the proposal because of a lack of security guarantees , prompting Trump to accuse him of breaking an agreement that had supposedly already been reached .
In the past, Zelensky had already considered the development of his country's natural resources by the USA in order to secure Trump's support. In an interview with the Reuters news agency in mid-February, the Ukrainian president said: "The Americans have helped the most, so the Americans should also earn the most."
Recently, however, there have been doubts about the presence of rare earths in Ukraine. As the Berliner Zeitung reported, most estimates of the deposits date back to the Soviet era and could be out of date. This could mean that the development of the raw materials and minerals could be much more difficult than expected.
Berliner-zeitung
