A proposed minerals deal between the United States and Ukraine will not apply to past disbursements of U.S. assistance to Kyiv, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has said.
“Agreements have been reached that the document does not count [U.S.] assistance provided [to Ukraine] before its signing,” Shmyhal wrote in an April 27 post on the Telegram messaging platform.
U.S. President Donald Trump has touted the deal as a way to recoup some of the tens of billions of dollars that Washington has given Ukraine—in the form of both financial and military assistance—since Russia invaded the country in 2022.
Shmyhal said the proposed minerals deal would not apply retroactively to any of the U.S. assistance previously granted to Ukraine.
“We have clearly defined our red lines,” he wrote on Telegram. “The agreement must comply with European obligations and not contradict the Constitution and legislation of Ukraine.”
Legal teams are still hammering out the deal’s terms, Shmyhal said, adding that “good progress” had been made toward finalizing an agreement.
The Ukrainian prime minister made the remarks shortly after returning from the United States, where he held talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and officials from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The two sides had been poised to sign a minerals deal in February, but this was shelved after an acrimonious White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Last month, the U.S. administration proposed an alternative draft agreement that would, if signed, grant the United States privileged access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth.
In mid-April, Washington and Kyiv signed a memorandum as a first step toward clinching a final deal on the joint development of Ukrainian mineral resources.
The memorandum, she said, served to confirm “the constructive joint work of our teams and the intention to finalize and conclude an agreement that will be beneficial to both our peoples.”
The document, published by Kyiv, did not provide details about U.S. access to Ukrainian mineral resources or how much revenue the United States stood to gain from the deal.
“We’re still working on the details,” Bessent said at the time. “It’s substantially what we’d agreed on previously.”
Although it is still unclear when the deal will be signed, U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz said on April 27 that a final agreement “is going to get done.”
Trump: Very Close to a Deal
The U.S. administration also views a prospective minerals deal as a means of fostering peace between Kyiv and Moscow by giving the United States a financial stake in Ukraine’s future.Last month, U.S. National Security Council spokesman James Hewitt said the minerals deal would allow Kyiv “to form an enduring economic relationship with the United States that is the basis for long term security and peace.”
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has waged an intense diplomatic campaign aimed at ending the more than three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“Most of the major points are agreed to,” Trump said in a social media post.
