“We have a minerals deal which I guess is going to be signed on Thursday,” Trump said while meeting with Italian Prime Minster Giorgia Meloni
President Donald Trump said the US and Ukraine would sign a deal on critical minerals next Thursday, in a step expected to keep Kyiv in good favour as the White House seeks to broker a quick ceasefire deal with Russia.
“We have a minerals deal which I guess is going to be signed on Thursday,” Trump said while meeting with Italian Prime Minster Giorgia Meloni in the Oval Office. “And I assume they’re going to live up to the deal.”
The announcement puts the agreement — which fell through after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy clashed with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office — back on track, and suggests both sides have agreed to the contours of the accord governing postwar plans to exploit the country’s mineral deposits and rebuild its infrastructure.
The agreement comes as Trump has vacillated between blaming Moscow and Kyiv for failing to end the war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Trump has demanded a joint US-Ukraine development deal as compensation for the weapons and other aid the US provided under his predecessor, Joe Biden.
Earlier this months Ukraine and US have conducted technical discussions on the deal and agreed to sign transitional memorandum of intent, fixing the positive steps, made by the parties. The document was signed online late Thursday, clearing the way “for an Economic Partnership Agreement and the establishment of the Investment Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Vice Prime-Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said in a post on X.
Following a round of negotiations in Washington, the Trump administration reduced its estimate for the assistance the US provided to Kyiv since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion from €260 billion to about€90 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. This bring it closer to Ukraine’s own estimate of more than €80 billion.
