Trump Says Rare Earth Minerals Deal With Zelensky, Ukraine ‘Pretty Close’
President Donald Trump said on Friday that his administration is “pretty close” to finalizing a deal with Ukraine for access to its natural resources in exchange for the United States’ billions of dollars in support for the country in its conflict with Russia.
“You know, I think they want it, and they feel good about it,” Trump told reporters on Friday in the Oval Office after the swearing-in ceremony of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, per Fox News. “And it’s significant. It’s a big deal. But they want it, and it keeps us in that country. And they’re very happy about it.
“We get our money back. They should have been signed long before we went in. They should have been signed by Biden. But Biden didn’t know too much about what he was doing. The war should have never happened, No. 1. When it did happen, it could have been settled.”
Trump added: “The first week or two weeks after that, it got bad. It got really bad, but it should have been, it should have never happened. And it should have been settled, and it could have been settled very easily at the beginning. Now it’s tougher, but we’ll get it settled.”
The New York Post added Friday evening:
The Trump administration is close to a deal with Ukraine for access to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mineral rights in a giant step toward ending Russia’s brutal war on the European nation just three days before the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion, The Post can reveal.
Full details of the tentative agreement were unclear late Friday, but the good-cop-bad-cop approach of President Trump and his special envoy, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, helped close the gap between Washington and Kyiv.
Kellogg, one of the few Trump administration officials still supportive of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, started his two-day trip back to the U.S. without confirming a deal that the White House has strongly advocated for—yet one that high-level officials in Zelensky’s government regard as a shakedown.
“Any deal that can be made has to be mutually beneficial,” a spokesperson for the Ukrainian president’s office told The Post.
But then, not long afterward, Trump announced at the White House that the US and Ukraine were “signing an agreement, hopefully in the next fairly short period of time.”
After a week of tense exchanges between Washington and Kyiv, it was Kellogg’s visit on Friday to wounded Ukrainian veterans at Irpin Military Hospital, northwest of Kyiv, that helped mend relations and brought the deal closer to completion, sources familiar with the situation told The Post.
Hours earlier, Kellogg had also set himself apart from the rest of the administration by publicly praising Zelensky, The Post noted.
“A long and intense day with the senior leadership of Ukraine,” Kellogg noted on his personal X account following a round of meetings Thursday. “Extensive and positive discussions with @ZelenskyyUa, the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war and his talented national security team.”
Kellogg was the last White House official publicly scheduled to meet in person with the Ukrainian leader for the foreseeable future, following Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s inability to secure a similar deal, which reportedly lacked any security guarantees for Ukraine.
“It sounds like there’s been some positive movement in the negotiations over the past couple days, and I expect the two sides will likely end up reaching a deal,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies Russia Program director John Hardie said in a statement to The Post.
“In principle, US-Ukraine cooperation on Ukraine’s natural resources, including its critical minerals, is a great idea. But any agreement should be mutually beneficial.”
