The White House announced on Wednesday night that it had signed an economic association with Ukraine that includes an agreement on the property and extraction of natural resources of the nation devastated by war.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besent, said that the agreement, established as the United States-Ukraine reconstruction investment fund, will allow the United States to “invest next to Ukraine” to unlock its growth assets and, ultimately, accelerate its economic recovery.
“As the president said, the United States undertakes to help facilitate the end of this cruel and meaningless war. This agreement clearly indicates to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process focused on a free, sovereign and prosperous ukraine in the long term,” Bessent said in a statement. “President Trump imagined this association between the American people and the Ukrainian people to show the commitment of both parties to peace and lasting prosperity in Ukraine.
“And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplies the Russian war machine can benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the agreement.
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Yulia Svyrydenko, Minister of Economy of Ukraine, provided more details on the mineral agreement described in the agreement, saying first in X that “it is the Ukrainian State that determines what and where to extract” and that “the subsoil remains under the Ukrainian property.”
Ukraine and the United States will administer and jointly maintain the co -ownership of the investment fund, and none of the parties has a dominant vote, said Svyrydenko. It will be financed by new Ukrainian oil, gas and mineral licenses, with 50% of all income from licenses allocated to the fund.
“The fund will invest in extraction projects for critical materials, oil and gas, as well as in related infrastructure and processing. Ukraine and the United States will jointly select specific investment projects,” he said in X.
Svydenko indicated in his position that the United States will also contribute to the fund, through it it is not clear exactly how much. He added that the contributions to the fund will not be taxed in Ukraine or in the United States to guarantee the “maximum effectiveness of the investment process.”
Trump said early Wednesday that the agreement would serve as a route for the United States to recover the funds it has provided to Ukraine throughout its war with Russia, a figure that the State Department has placed at $ 66.5 billion in terms of military assistance.
“I didn’t want to make a complicated agreement,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “The rare earth is called rare for a reason, and they have a lot, and we made a deal where our money is safe, where we can start digging and doing what we have to do.”
It is not clear how much money will be used to pay the United States. Svydenko said in his position that the agreement “does not include provisions on any obligation of Ukrainian debt with the United States.”
The agreement was signed days after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Rome outside Pope Francis’s funeral. Trump suggested that the couple’s relationship had improved since his oval office clash in February, characterizing the meeting as “beautiful” and expressing his confidence that Zelenskyy “wants to make a deal” to end the war.
Trump’s anger was addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump criticized for carrying out generalized attacks on kyiv despite the continuous effort of US officials to ensure a plan to finish the war, which began in February 2022.
Putin met with the special envoy of the United States Steve Witkoff on Friday for approximately three hours in Moscow, with a Putin assistant who later described his discussion as “productive.”
After the meeting, Trump urged Ukraine and Russia to hold tall conversations “very high level”, adding that the two parties are “very close to an agreement” to finish the war. The two countries have not conducted direct conversations since the first days of Russia’s invasion.
