Zelenskiy cautious on new minerals deal but says past US aid was not a loan

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine would not accept any mineral rights deal that threatened its integration with the EU but said it was too early to pass judgment on a dramatically expanded minerals deal proposed by Washington.

The Ukrainian leader told reporters that Kyiv’s lawyers needed to review the draft before he could say more about the US offer, a summary of which suggested the US was demanding all Ukraine’s natural resources income for years.

He also said Kyiv would not recognize billions of dollars of past US aid as loans, though he did not say whether such a demand featured in the latest draft version received by a top government official.

Zelenskiy said the text was “entirely different” from an earlier framework agreement that he had been set to sign with Donald Trump before their talks descended into acrimony last month.

“I don’t want to set off a wave (of comments), I really want us to get a specific review by lawyers at the highest level,” Zelenskiy told the news conference in Kyiv.

The latest US proposal would require Kyiv to send Washington all profit from a fund controlling Ukrainian resources until Ukraine had repaid all American wartime aid, plus interest, according to the summary, reviewed by Reuters.

Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko told lawmakers that Kyiv would issue its position on the new draft only once there was consensus. Until then, public discussion would be harmful, she said.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior official in President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, told Reuters there was no finalized draft for now: “Consultations are still happening at the level of the various ministries,” he said, declining to elaborate further.

Another Ukrainian source described the full document presented by the Americans as “huge”.

Revised draft

The Trump administration, which has reoriented Washington’s policy towards endorsing Russia’s narrative about the three-year-old war in Ukraine, has been pressing Kyiv for weeks to sign a deal giving Washington a stake in Ukraine’s resources.

Zelenskiy has repeatedly said he accepts the idea, although he would not sign an agreement that would impoverish his country. On Thursday he said Washington was constantly changing the terms but that he did not want the US to think he was opposed in principle.

Three people familiar with the ongoing negotiations said Washington had revised its proposals. The latest draft gives Ukraine no future security guarantees and requires it to contribute to a joint investment fund all income from the use of natural resources managed by state and private enterprises.

According to the summary, it stipulates that Washington is given first rights to purchase extracted resources and recoup all the money it has given Ukraine since 2022, plus interest at a 4% annual rate, before Ukraine begins to gain access to the fund’s profits.

Ukraine’s 2024 budget revenues included, among other things, $1.2 billion of rent payments for the use of subsurface resources, $1.8 billion in dividends and other payments from the state share in state-owned companies, and $19.4 billion from profits at state-owned companies, finance ministry data showed.

The joint investment fund would be managed by the US International Development Finance Corporation and have a board of five people, three appointed by the US and two by Ukraine. Funds would be converted into foreign currency and transferred abroad.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Gram Slattery, Erin Bano and Andrea Shalal, Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Jon Boyle)