Ukraine’s economy minister says it has signed a memorandum of intent with the United States, paving the way for a rare earth mineral agreement to be finalized next week.
She added, “This document is the result of the professional work of the negotiating teams, which recently completed another round of technical discussions in Washington.”
“Ahead is the finalization of the text of the agreement and its signing—and then, ratification by parliaments,” added Syvrydenko.
The memorandum of intent says Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will travel to Washington at the start of next week to meet U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and finalize the deal.
Ukraine has sizable deposits of rare earths—including graphite, lithium and titanium—used in electronics, and also uranium.
The details of the agreement have not been made public and it is not clear if it contains the security guarantees which Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded, to prevent future Russian aggression.
Hours after the memorandum of intent was signed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday the United States was ready to “move on” from efforts to negotiate a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine peace deal if there was no progress in the next few days.
Trump has championed various iterations of the minerals deal as a means to recoup the money the United States has spent in assisting Ukraine’s defense since Russia invaded in February 2022.
The United States has provided about $120 billion worth of direct aid to Ukraine since then, most of which came in the form of weapons transferred directly from the United States to Ukrainian stockpiles.
Zelenskyy has been reluctant to sign away what wealth Ukraine does have without promises of some form of safety after more than a decade of war against Russia, and Russian-backed separatists.
Trump previously suggested Ukraine would give the United States $500 billion worth of its rare earths and critical mineral deposits.
The most recent iteration of the deal made public would not seek to recoup previous U.S. assistance and would instead create a joint U.S.-Ukrainian reconstruction fund which would feed profits to the United States from Ukrainian mineral development.
Trump’s attempts to corral Kyiv and Moscow into a temporary cease-fire remain in limbo.
An initial partial cease-fire deal, which leadership from both Ukraine and Russia agreed to last month, sought to halt attacks on civilian energy infrastructure for 30 days.
That deal was almost immediately breached, with officials in each country accusing the other of violating the truce by sabotaging an oil facility in a part of Russia occupied by Ukrainian troops.
Putin has said an end to the war would require Ukraine to cede four eastern provinces to Russia, abandon its quest for NATO membership, and be forbidden from hosting foreign troops on its soil for any reason.
