As Washington and Kyiv started another round of talks about the mineral deal that would give the United States a major stake in Ukraine's natural resources, the Trump administration has a new demand-- US control over a crucial pipeline passing through Ukraine that's used to send Russian gas to Europe.
The latest draft proposal presented by US officials is more "maximalist" than the original version floated in February, which proposed Kyiv giving Washington $500bn worth of rare metals, as well as oil and gas, a report by news agency Reuters said.
Quoting sources, the report said the new document has several "Easter eggs", one of them being the Trump administration demanding that the US government's International Development Finance Corporation take control of a natural gas pipeline from Russian energy giant Gazprom across Ukraine to Europe.
Why America Wants the Deal?
US President Donald Trump wants control over Ukraine's mineral deposits, which include prized rare earths, as "payback" in return for weapons delivered to Kyiv by the previous Biden administration after the start Russia-Ukraine war.
The US President has repeatedly claimed that America has given Ukraine between $300bn and $350bn in aid, and that he wanted to "get that money back" through a deal.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky first discussed the proposed deal with Trump last September, when he was the Republican nominee for the Presidential election.
The proposal was to give the US access to Ukraine's underdeveloped mineral sector. The Ukrainian leader envisaged a deal that would see the incoming Trump administration supply Ukraine with weapons, in return for future profits from joint investments, however, Washington has made no clear promise on the issue so far.
Negotiation So Far
American and Ukrainian officials met on Friday on a US proposal to gain access to Ukraine's mineral wealth. But, the prospects for a breakthrough were scant given the meeting's "antagonistic" atmosphere, according to a Reuters report.
The strains in the Washington talks stemmed from the Trump administration's latest draft proposal, which is more expansive than the original version, the agency reported, quoting a source.
"The negotiating environment is very antagonistic," the source said, pointing to the "maximalist" draft submitted by the Trump administration last month.
The development was confirmed by a Treasury Department spokesperson, who called them "technical in nature."
The Ukrainian government has hired law firm Hogan Lovells as an outside adviser on the minerals deal, the source said.
What Is America's New Proposal?
The latest draft would give the US privileged access to Ukraine's mineral deposits and require Kyiv to place in a joint investment fund all income from the exploitation of natural resources by Ukrainian state and private firms.
The proposed deal, however, would not provide US security guarantees to Kyiv - a top priority of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky - for its fight against Russian forces occupying some 20 per cent of its territory.
The source said that one of the "Easter eggs" found in the document was a demand that the US government's International Development Finance Corporation take control of a natural gas pipeline that runs from the town of Sudzha in western Russia to the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, on the border with the EU and Slovakia.
Built in Soviet times, the pipeline was shut by Ukraine on January 1, after its five-year contract with the Russian state energy company Gazprom expired. The major energy route has earned both Russia and Ukraine hundreds of millions of euros in transit fees, including during the first three years of full-scale war.
Ukraine Refuses To Back Down
Zelensky on Wednesday said a minerals deal should be profitable for both countries and could be structured in a way that would help modernize Ukraine.
"I am just defending what belongs to Ukraine. It should be beneficial for both the United States and Ukraine. This is the right thing to do," the Ukrainian leader said.
Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist with the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv thinktank, told The Guardian that the Americans were out for "all they can get".
He predicted that America's bullying "colonial-type" demands had little chance of being accepted by Kyiv.
