Ukraine and the US have made progress on a mineral deal, says Kyiv

Ukraine and the US have made “significant progress” in negotiations on a mineral agreement and will sign a memorandum in the near future, Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Wednesday, the 16th of April, according to Reuters.
US President Donald Trump is seeking a bilateral mineral agreement as part of his efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. Trump also sees it as a way to recover the billions of dollars the US has spent on military aid to Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine will not recognise previous US military aid as loans.
“Our technical teams have been working very thoroughly together on the agreement and significant progress has been made. Our legal team has corrected several points in the draft agreement,” Svyrydenko said in a post on X.
Svyrydenko said that work on the agreement would continue and that the two sides agreed to sign a memorandum in the near future to show the progress made as a first step.
Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s deputy economy minister, told state television that negotiations were progressing and that a provisional document or memorandum was likely to be signed soon.
“The final document will not be signed this week. There is still a lot of work to be done, because the ideas included in the agreement by the US side need to be developed,” Kachka said.
The US has cut its estimate for the amount of aid it has provided to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022 from 300 billion to around 100 billion US dollars, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Last month, the Trump administration proposed a new, broader mineral treaty that offers no future security guarantees for Ukraine, but requires Ukraine to direct all revenues from the development of natural resources by state and private companies on Ukrainian territory to a joint investment fund.
The forthcoming agreement would require ratification by the Ukrainian parliament and is expected to help economic growth in both countries, Svyrydenko said, without giving further details.
“It will create opportunities for investment and development in Ukraine and create conditions for tangible economic growth for both Ukraine and the US,” she said.