U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko signed the minerals deal that President Trump insisted on as a condition for continued U.S. support for the Ukrainian government.
Per a Reuters report on the news, the deal is important for the Ukrainian government, which hopes to appease President Trump and motivate him to extend U.S. aid of all sorts. Indeed, Svyrydenko wrote on X, as cited by Reuters, that “In addition to direct financial contributions, it may also provide NEW assistance – for example air defense systems for Ukraine.”
The U.S. side has not made such specific suggestions, however.
What the deal amounts to is the establishment of a joint investment fund, which will grant the United States preferential access to Ukraine’s mineral resources, which Trump has hyped as massive. So has Ukraine, but some doubt the validity of the data. Per that data, the country is home to some $15 trillion worth of metals and minerals, including the largest reserves of lithium, titanium, and uranium in Europe.
Time magazine recently cited some concerns about the reliability of the resource data, saying that “The U.N. says Ukraine holds 5% of the world’s rare earth minerals, including 22 of the 34 most critical for national security. But assessments of Ukrainian minerals are based on outdated Soviet-era data and models that may not be accurate.”
What’s more, the lead times for developing these deposits are rather extensive, as they are with most mining projects, taking up as long as 18 years. In a further complication, a solid part of these resources are in the eastern part of the country, which the Ukrainian government just signaled it was ready to recognize as Russian, for a time.
President Trump insisted on the deal as repayment for the massive financial and material aid the U.S. has provided to the Ukraine over the past three years or, as the Treasury described it in the announcement of the deal, “the significant financial and material support that the people of the United States have provided to the defense of Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion.”
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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