President says ‘I hear he’s coming on Friday’ amid reports that terms of US-Ukraine aid exchange have been reached
Donald Trump has said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is likely to visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal to pay for US military aid to defend against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The announcement followed days of tense negotiations between the US and Ukraine in which Zelenskyy alleged the US was pressuring him to sign a deal worth more than $500bn that would force “10 generations” of Ukrainians to pay it back.
Media outlets reported late on Tuesday that the terms of an agreement had been reached.
“I hear that he’s coming on Friday,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Certainly it’s OK with me if he’d like to. And he would like to sign it together with me. And I understand that’s a big deal, very big deal.”
According to the Financial Times, which first reported the deal, the new terms of the deal did not include the onerous demands for a right to $500bn in potential revenue from exploiting the resources, which include rare earth metals and Ukrainian oil and gas resources.
A framework for the deal included joint ownership of a fund to develop Ukraine’s mineral resources with certain caveats for those resources already contributing to the state budget.
It was more favourable to Ukraine than the original deal proposed by Washington but did not include references to long-term security guarantees that Kyiv wanted to receive in the deal.
Certain details of the deal remained unclear, including the US’s ownership stake in the new fund.
Asked what Ukraine would receive in the deal, Trump said: “$350bn, military equipment and the right to fight on.”
“We’ve pretty much negotiated our deal on earth and various other things,” Trump added. “We’ll be looking … general security for Ukraine later on. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. There are a lot of people that want to do it, and I spoke with Russia about it. They didn’t seem to have a problem with it. So I think they understand they’re not going back. And once we do this, they’re not going back.”
Neither the US nor Ukrainian governments immediately responded to requests for comment from the Guardian on whether the deal had been agreed.
Source: The Guardian
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