President Volodymyr Zensky van Ukraine, during a meeting with a closed door on Wednesday, rejected an offer from the Trump government to record half of the country's mineral resources in exchange for American support, according to five people who have been informed about it Proposal or with direct knowledge of the direct knowledge of the talk.
The unusual deal is said to have given the United States an interest of 50 percent in all mineral agents of Ukraine, including graphite, lithium and uranium, as compensation for earlier and future support in the war effort of Kiev against Russian invaders, according to two European officials. A Ukrainian officer and an energy expert at the level of the proposal said that the Trump government also sought Ukrainian energy sources.
The negotiations are continued, according to another Ukrainian officer, who, like the others, spoke about the condition of anonymity in view of the sensitivity of the conversations. But the expansiveness of the proposal, and the tense negotiations around it, demonstrate the growing gap between Kiev and Washington about both constant American support and a potential end of the war.
The request for half of the minerals of Ukraine was made on Wednesday, when the American Minister of Finance, Scott Bessent, Mr Zelensky in Kiev, met the first visit of a Trump officer to Ukraine. The Ministry of Finance refused to comment on every negotiation.
After seeing the proposal, the Ukrainians decided to revise the details and provide a contraproposal when Mr. Zelensky visited the Munich security conference on Friday and met vice -president JD Vance, according to the officer.
It is not clear whether a counter -protection has been presented.
Mr Zelensky, who spoke with reporters in Munich on Saturday, acknowledged that he had rejected a proposal from the Trump government. He did not specify what the conditions of the deal were, except to say that it had not included security guarantees from Washington.
“I don't see this connection in the document,” he said. “In my opinion it is not ready to protect us, our interests.”
The security guarantee is the key, because Ukrainians believe that the United States and Great Britain did not comply with their obligations to protect the country under an agreement at the end of the Cold War, when Ukraine gave up the Russian nuclear weapons on its territory.
European diplomats still had an objection. They complained that the negotiations were stinking at colonialism, an era in which Western countries exploited smaller or weaker countries for raw materials.
In Munich there was also a wave about the Trump's plans to end the war between the United States and its European allies. Many of them said they were more confused than before they arrived.
A Ukrainian official and an energy expert informed about Mr Bessent's offer, said it not only included half of the minerals of Ukraine, but also other natural resources such as oil and gas. The civil servant also said that the proposal gave the United States a claim to half of the income of Ukraine from the extraction of resources and the sale of new extraction licenses.
Accrease to these requirements would rob the Ukrainian government of millions of dollars in income that are currently almost fully invested in the defense of the country. In the first half of last year, Naftogaz, Ukraine's state ownership, reported oil and gas giant, a profit of more than half a billion dollars.
The idea of using Ukraine's mineral resources began to take shape last summer. The government of Mr. Zensky, who tries to appeal to Mr Trump's business approach and feared that he would comply with his promises to close military and financial assistance to Ukraine, decided to close a deal that essentially the Ukrainian Critical minerals for American help would exchange for American aid.
The Ukrainian president presented the idea to Mr Trump during a September meeting in New York, and the proposal received support from influential political figures, including Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican. It was also after American business people – also as Ronald S. Lauder, a rich friend of Mr. Trump – showed interest to invest in the mineral resources of Ukraine.
Kyiv had always maintained that access to his natural resources would be in exchange for strong security guarantees of Washington. But one of the Ukrainian officials said that the proposal did not enter into such a commitment, instead access to Ukraine's resources as a overdue payment for American military and financial help in the past.
Ukraine has 109 important mineral deposits, including those with ores of titanium, lithium and uranium, composed by the KYIV School of Economics, in addition to oil and natural gas fields. However, some are already ground under the Russian occupation or close to the front line.
Their value is uncertain. Apart from the risks of a repeated Russian invasion after a cease-fire-fired one risk that a deal with the United States is intended to reduce-die-rooted problems in the business climate of Ukraine have been bumpy investments for a large part of history of the country after independence.
These include mysterious regulations and insider trade by Ukrainian business people and politicians, who can limit any profit from the scheme. Even before the war, few investors were customers of Ukrainian mining agreements.
But there is a precedent for Ukraine to combine security and matters with the United States under Mr Trump. In his first term, in 2017, he concluded a deal for Ukraine to buy coal from Pennsylvania to replace coal with mines in Ukraine lost under the Russian occupation after the invasion of 2014.
Kostiantyn Yelisieiev, a former diplomat and the deputy Staff Chef under the President of Ukraine at the time the agreement was concluded, reminded that the Deal had allowed Mr. Trump to declare that he had saved jobs in Pennsylvania, a swing state. For Kyiv, the agreement opened the door for Mr Trump to offer fatal military help to Ukraine with the approval for the sale of spear anti-tank rockets.
At the time, Ukrainian officials saw it as a success, Mr. Yelisieiev said. “It confirmed that Trump is not a person with values, but a person of interests and money,” and that Ukraine could find a way to work with him on safety, he said.
But the deal that is being discussed now, he said, increases the approach in ways that Russia could give a propaganda by bringing the war as a struggle for natural resources, not Ukrainian independence or democracy.
“It is more important to say that this is about protecting democracies and beating Putin,” he said.
