Ukraine and the U.S. Reach Agreement on Mineral Deal

Ukraine and the United States have reached an agreement on a framework for a broad economic deal that would include access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals. The agreement could be signed as early as Friday and plans are being drawn up for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to travel to Washington to meet President Trump.

The agreement would provide an opportunity for Zelenskyy and Mr. Trump to discuss continued military aid to Ukraine. Mr. Trump has called the deal "a very big deal" and said it could be worth a trillion dollars.

Some technical details are still to be worked out, but the draft does not include a contentious Trump administration proposal to give the U.S. $500 billion worth of profits from Ukraine's rare earth minerals as compensation for its wartime assistance to Kyiv. Instead, the U.S. and Ukraine would have joint ownership of a fund, and Ukraine would in the future contribute 50 percent of future proceeds from state-owned resources, including minerals, oil, and gas.

The deal does not, however, include security guarantees. This would be something the two presidents would discuss when they meet.

The progress in negotiating the deal comes after Mr. Trump and Zelenskyy traded sharp rhetoric last week about their differences over the matter. Zelenskyy said he balked at signing off on a deal that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed during a visit to Kyiv earlier this month, and the Ukrainian leader objected again days later during a meeting in Munich with Vice President JD Vance because the American proposal did not include security guarantees.

Mr. Trump then called Volodymyr Zelenskyy "a dictator without elections" and claimed his support among voters was near rock-bottom.

But the two sides made significant progress during a three-day visit to Ukraine last week by retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump's special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.

The idea was initially proposed last fall by Zelenskyy as part of his plan to strengthen Kyiv's hand in future negotiations with Moscow.