President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will sign an agreement that gives the United States significant access to Ukraine's lucrative rare earth minerals and compensates Washington for weapons sent to Ukraine to fight Russian aggression.
Mr. Zelenskyy will go to the White House on Friday to sign the pact and discuss the war, Mr. Trump said at his first cabinet meeting since taking office.
The agreement "is very favorable to us," Mr. Trump said, but the main objective is to end the war, which has caused the deaths and injuries of several hundred thousand Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, as well as Ukrainian civilians.
“Objective No. 2 is to recoup the costs,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the more than $100 billion in munitions that Washington has sent to Kiev. “Without our equipment, that [war] would have been over very quickly,” with Russia taking control of Ukraine.
Russia now controls about a fifth of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory and has vowed not to return any of it.
President Trump said he expects to reach a deal with President Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war. Mr. Trump began talks with Mr. Putin about ending the conflict, but the first discussions last week between top American and Russian diplomats, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, did not include Ukrainian and European officials.
Mr. Trump said the war would end thanks to his election as president. He also said Wednesday that Ukraine should not expect to join NATO as part of a peace deal.
In Kiev, Mr. Zelenskyy told a news conference that the framework for the rare earths deal was complete, but that US security guarantees for Ukraine, which the Kiev government considers vital, had not yet been resolved.
President Trump has called President Zelenskyy a dictator and falsely accused Ukraine of starting a war with Russia.
The US leader has said he is particularly outraged that former President Joe Biden agreed to military aid to Ukraine without including any provision for Ukraine to pay the cost.
Mr Zelenskyy has said the US military aid was a grant and not a loan that had to be repaid, but now he has agreed to the rare earth minerals deal.
The Ukrainian president said he expected to have broad and substantive discussions with Trump, including whether the US planned to stop military aid and, if so, whether Ukraine would be able to buy weapons directly from the US.
He said he also wanted to know whether Ukraine could use frozen Russian assets for investments in weapons and whether Washington plans to lift economic sanctions on Russian entities and high-level associates and friends of Putin.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will meet Mr Trump on Thursday in Washington to discuss a European initiative for a 30,000-strong peacekeeping force to guarantee a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, if it can be achieved, although there is no plan for peace talks.
European leaders have said a peacekeeping force would require American support, such as satellite surveillance or air support. Mr. Trump has not committed to such a plan, but on Wednesday he called the peacekeeping force "a positive idea." / VOA
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