Kyiv and London – The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said a press conference in kyiv on Wednesday that Ukraine has been working on a “preliminary framework” for a mineral agreement to share with the United States, but again warned that no agreement can be successful without sufficient guarantees Western security.
“Without future safety guarantees, we will not be high,” said Zelenskyy. “And if we don’t have it, nothing will work. Nothing will work.”
The president told ABC News that Trump will face the challenges a lot “with Russian President Vladimir Putin.” It really is very difficult. I understand that President Trump wants to do it quickly. “
“But this is not a dialogue with someone,” Zelenskyy added. “He will have many challenges with Putin, because he doesn’t want to end the war.”
“The most important thing is to end the war yesterday,” the president continued. “We need to concentrate to obtain peace without any possibility of returning to war. That is why we are focusing only on peace and durable. This is more important than weeks. Of course we want in a matter of days.”
This combination of images created on February 25, 2025 shows President Donald Trump on February 24, 2025, and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, on February 23, 2025.
Jim Watsontetiana Dzhafarova/AFP through Getty Images
Zelensky also said that he is ready to be “flexible” about security guarantees, which suggests that the United States did not need to be in their center, but could contribute along with other countries. The president added that he wants to ask Trump if the United States could stop US military aid in the future. For now, he said, there is no freezing in help.
Zelenskyy emphasized that any mineral agreement cannot put Ukraine in debt for previous US subsidies in times of war. That would open a “Pandora box,” he said, allowing other nations to demand payments.
A Ukrainian official described the details of ABC’s news of a possible American mineral agreement in UU-UKRAINE, sharing points that seem to suggest that kyiv has succeeded in significantly improving the terms, perhaps looking at some of the most onerous demands of the Trump administration.
The $ 500 billion required by Trump no longer appears in the draft, said a Ukrainian official to ABC News. The fund in which Ukraine will pay will not be 100% owned by the United States, said the official.
The two countries have agreed to an agreement related to critical minerals and other resources, a senior Ukrainian official said on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump did not confirm that the United States would agree, instead, said he had heard that Zelenskyy will visit Washington, DC, to end the agreement on Friday and that “it is fine for me if he would like.”
The terms of a final agreement have not yet been revealed.
The Ukrainian official said that the resources to which the agreement will be applied are only those that currently do not contribute to the Ukrainian budget, which means that there is no oil and gas, or probably most of the country’s mineral resources.
If the final agreement remains close to those terms, the agreement may be quite restricted in real economic terms.
The excavators of the Ram Mining Wheels Rare Earth materials in the Ukrainian soil on February 25, 2025, in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine.
Libkos/Getty Images
Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister and co -chair of the European Foreign Affairs Council, told BBC News that the mineral seems like a “secondary show” and was mainly designed to “keep Mr. Trump happy.”
“But it is not going to give much money to the United States, and I don’t see that it has any materially economic effect for many years,” Bildt told the BBC.
This is a development story. Consult the updates again.
ABC News’ Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
