With Minerals Deal, Trump Ties Himself to Future of Ukraine

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. Althegh, the Trump administration had wanted kyiv to use its mineral wealth to pay US military assistance, the idea of ​​dealing with that help as a debt was eliminated in the final document.

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 have opposed.

But a security guarantee was not mentioned, that Ukraine had tried to prevent Russia from regrouping after any cessation of fire.

Even so, the highly anticipated firm of the agreement has almost surely achieved something that seemed almost impossible two months ago: it has linked Mr. Trump with the future of Ukraine.

“This agreement clearly points 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 two weeks, Parliament members said Thursday morning.

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 signing of the agreement in the Centenary in the position of Trump was only the last turn in his growing approach to 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 the greatest former president of kyiv, 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. The agreement was unproven. In the consequences, the Trump administration temporarily suspended military aid and the exchange of intelligence with Ukraine.

But Trump has also repeatedly said that he wanted to end the war, just campaigning in the promise that he would do it in 24 hours. Since then, Trump has 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 Minerals Agreement offered an opportunity for some influence.

Ukrainian officials had desperately wanted the agreement to include a United States security guarantee child. Without one, they feared, Russia could violate any high 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 Russia.

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 will undoubtedly leave a significant mark on them.”

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 “that this large -scale war finally ends, that things improve for us.”

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn Contributed reports.