New Trump deal seeks even more minerals from Kyiv

Donald Trump is seeking US control over all of Ukraine’s rare minerals and energy assets including oil and gas in extraordinary new proposals to Kyiv. Mr Trump’s latest proposals go far beyond the minerals deal that collapsed last month during Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous White House visit.

- ANDY GREGORY

The new deal would see the US receive all royalties from such assets until Ukraine has paid off at least $100bn of war debt, and hand Kyiv just 50 per cent thereafter – while offering no guarantees of security from Russian aggression in return.

Furthermore, it would hand the US a veto over any sales of the Ukrainian resources to other nations, potentially blocking any future path for Ukraine to join the European Union.

One Kyiv official described the proposal as “robbery” to the Financial Times, while Alan Riley, an expert on energy law at the Atlantic Council, told The Telegraph: “I’ve never seen anything like it before ... I have to wonder whether the real intention might not be to force Zelensky to reject it.”

Under the latest proposals, all of Ukraine’s mineral and energy assets – and related infrastructure, such as ports, railways, roads and production facilities – would be placed under the control of a new United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund, based in Delaware.

Three of the new fund’s five board members would be chosen by the US, handing Washington full veto power over resource sales to any third parties.