Trump says Zelensky will likely travel to Washington in next two weeks to sign deal on Ukrainian natural resources. ‘We’ll get our money back,’ claims Trump.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced Monday that he plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the next two weeks to sign an agreement on natural resources.
In fact, he may come in [to Washington] this week or next week to sign the agreement, which would be nice. I’d love to meet [with] him. We’d meet at the Oval Office. So, the agreement’s being worked on now. They’re very close to a final deal. It’ll be a deal with rare earths and various other things. He would like to come, as I understand it, here to sign it. And that would be great with me. I think they then have to get it approved by their council or whoever might approve it, but I’m sure that will happen.
Trump again described the agreement as a form of compensation for assistance already rendered to Ukraine:
The deal is being worked on where we get our money back over a period of time. But it also gives us something [that] is very beneficial to their economy, to them as a country. But we’re in for $350 billion. How we got there, I don’t know. But that’s a lot of money. A lot of money invested, and we have nothing to show for it. […] The Europeans are in for about $100 billion, and they do it in the form of a loan. And the Europeans have been great on this issue. They understood it wasn’t fair, and we were able to work something out. But, with the Ukrainians, I think I can say that we’re very close [to an agreement].
The U.S. and Ukraine are weeks deep in negotiations on a controversial agreement to grant American firms rights to Ukrainian natural resources. According to The Economist, Ukrainian officials have met with three groups of U.S. negotiators, each pushing its own version of the agreement. The Economist has described the deal as a mafia-style “offer Ukraine cannot refuse.”