We now know what Volodymyr Zelensky meant when he hinted at an “historic deal” after his meeting with Donald Trump at Pope Francis’s funeral on Saturday. And, in a sense, the new minerals accord between Washington and Kyiv is historic, because it very nearly didn’t happen.
Just two weeks ago, the US had threatened to walk away from Ukraine completely. Now, that it has secured preferential access to Ukrainian critical minerals, it has skin in the game once more. Though it offers Trump a victory to bring back for his MAGA base at home, the new deal is certainly more favourable to Kyiv than earlier offers. The split proposed will now be 50:50 – with Kyiv maintaining full control of its resources, deciding what will be mined and where. Gone, following that crucial tete-a-tete in Rome, is Trump’s previous insistence that Ukraine “owed” the US £260billion in debt repayments for loans made by his predecessor Joe Biden – a claim which Zelensky had always disputed. In exchange, the US will now invest in a reconstruction fund aimed at recouping around £130billion provided since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
But beyond the headlines, uncomfortable questions remain.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claims the agreement signals Washington’s long-term commitment to a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine.
But this is not a security deal. America signed one of those in 1994 – the Budapest Memorandum – only to quietly erase it from the White House website years later.
And Trump’s vague assurance that a US presence will “keep a lot of bad actors out” of mining areas overlooks the obvious: American businesses were in Ukraine when 100,000 Russian troops invaded.
Ukraine’s deputy economy minister Oleksiy Sobolev said the accord includes military support like air defences.
Yet Washington isn’t advertising that. It still hasn’t lifted the ban preventing countries like Australia from donating Abrams tanks, and would, arguably, prefer Ukraine to spend money on reconstruction, making it investable in other ways following a peace treaty which Trump views as ultimately inevitable.
Viewed from the White House, this deal isn’t really about Ukraine at all. It’s about China.
The US is vying with Beijing, the world’s largest producer of rare earths and critical minerals, for dominance over tomorrow’s tech.
Ukraine holds around 5% of the world’s critical raw materials, worth an estimated £10–12 trillion by 2033. That includes 19 million tonnes of graphite (used in EVs), 7% of Europe’s titanium, and a lithium reserve estimated at 500,000 metric tons.
But much of this wealth is difficult to extract and lies behind Russian lines. Two lithium sites are under occupation in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia. Kyiv still holds deposits in Kirovohrad, but the war has created a high-stakes mineral map.
With JD Vance absent, Saturday’s encounter between Trump and Zelensky was certainly more positive than the Oval Office mauling the Ukrainian experienced in March.
And some argue the US now has an incentive to “liberate” Ukrainian territory for mining.
But this misses a deeper, darker possibility: that should Russia eventually conquer Ukraine, there is little stopping Moscow from offering Washington the same deal. And just as little doubt that a Trump administration would take it.
