Ukraine and USA have signed a Reconstruction Investment Fund.
Will this affect anything in any meaningful way?
I suppose if Trump wants to extract Ukraine's natural resources, he'll have to silence the bombs first.
Time to stick it to Putin, or politely ask him to STOP! again?
US and Ukraine sign agreement creating investment fund after months of negotiations
Eli Stokols and Felicia Schwartz
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 29. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Updated: 04/30/2025 06:12 PM EDT
The U.S. and Ukraine have signed an economic partnership agreement to develop mineral resources in the Eastern European country amid its grinding war with Russia, the Trump administration announced Wednesday.
As part of the agreement, the U.S. and Ukraine will cooperate to establish an investment fund to help rebuild the Eastern European nation as the White House says it continues to seek peace more than three years after the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion.
“As the President has said, the United States is committed to helping facilitate the end of this cruel and senseless war,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said
in a statement announcing the deal. “This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term.”
Kyiv and Washington have been negotiating for months on an agreement, which would see the U.S. develop and profit from Ukraine’s vast natural resources, including critical elements and minerals vital to modern manufacturing, and contribute to a reconstruction fund for Ukraine.
Ukraine will retain full control over its national resources and state-owned enterprises will remain state property, the country said in an outline of the agreement.
The U.S. will contribute to the fund through direct payments or through new military assistance, according to the outline. Ukraine will contribute 50% of future revenue with royalties from newly issued licenses for critical minerals, oil and gas exploration.
The long-awaited signing came just days after Trump and Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, met on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in the Vatican City last weekend — and as the president has been pushing both Ukraine and Russia to hammer out a peace agreement to end the war.
The sudden urgency to cement the agreement, according to two people familiar with the process granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, stemmed in part from the president’s growing frustration with the pace of peace talks and, in particular, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has thus far been unwilling to accept the terms of Trump’s proposal for peace.
During their conversation inside St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, Zelenskyy encouraged Trump to apply more pressure on Putin. Trump, meanwhile, encouraged Ukraine’s leader to finalize the minerals agreement, which he has been pushing since taking office as a de facto post-war security guarantee for Ukraine.
In a
social media post sent from Air Force One as he returned to Washington, Trump pointed to Putin’s recent bombing campaign as a signal that “maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently.”
Asked during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday about the finalization of the minerals agreement, Trump said that it would help deter future attacks on Ukraine once peace is reached.
“The American presence will, I think, keep a lot of bad actors out of the country or certainly out of the area where we’re doing the digging,” he said.
The deal was close to being signed two months ago, when Zelenskyy met with Trump at the White House in late February, only to be shelved
after the meeting in the Oval Office turned acrimonious.
And even after Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko arrived in Washington on Wednesday to sign the agreement,
there were some momentary snags once again.
Ukraine had balked at signing the main economic pact and two technical side agreements.
A U.S. official confirmed that the sides signed all three agreements after Ukraine had requested some last minute changes and the U.S. Treasury played “hardball.”
Ukraine welcomed the deal as “a new stage in our cooperation with the U.S.”
“We are receiving not only investments, but also a strategic partner who will work with us on economic development and the introduction of innovations,”
Svyrydenko said.
Kyiv wanted to ensure the deal did not factor in past U.S. military aid, which Ukraine said Wednesday was included in the deal.
“The agreement focuses on future, not past, U.S. military assistance,” a
Ukrainian fact sheet said.
Trump, in his public comments about the minerals deal, has described it as a way for American taxpayers to recoup the approximately $120 billion in aid the U.S. has sent to Ukraine since the war began.
. You are bringing up my reaction score.
