US puts forward tough conditions in Ukraine's subsoil deal

The US plans to gain a large share of Ukraine's natural resources as a result of this deal.

The visit was the latest twist in a months-long saga in which Kyiv and Washington have been haggling over a deal that President Trump sees as a way to “return” past U.S. aid to Ukraine and which President Volodymyr Zelensky hopes will help provide defense guarantees for his country, the NYT reports.

The talks between the two delegations will be the first since the White House presented a revised draft of the minerals agreement, which re-stated the tough demands that official Kyiv had previously rejected, effectively returning the talks to their original state.

Officials in Kyiv told the NYT that the talks in Washington, which are expected to last two days, will be largely technical and will not involve senior Ukrainian and U.S. officials.

The Ukrainian delegation was led by Deputy Economy Minister Taras Kachka, who is responsible for trade, and included representatives from the Economy Ministry and the Justice Ministry. The White House did not provide the publication with details about the negotiations.

As in previous US proposals, Washington wants Ukraine to pay half of its revenues from natural resource extraction projects, including key minerals, oil and gas, as well as related infrastructure (including ports and pipelines) to an investment fund controlled by Washington.

The White House also wants profits from this fund to be reinvested in Ukrainian natural resource extraction projects, although the exact share of such profits remains unclear.

According to the NYT, the new version of the agreement does not mention security guarantees for Ukraine — a provision that Kyiv has long insisted on and which it managed to include in the draft last month, but which Washington has long resisted.

In addition, the new version contains stricter conditions than previous drafts: Washington wants to demand all profits from the aforementioned fund until Kyiv pays at least the equivalent of American aid received during the war — plus 4% per annum.

The United States also wants to retain the "right of first offer" on new projects and the right to veto the sale of Ukrainian resources to third countries. In the first year of the agreement, Ukraine wants to be prohibited from offering any investment projects to third parties on more favorable financial or economic terms than those that will be offered to Washington in the future, the publication writes.

The fund will be overseen by the International Finance and Development Corporation, a U.S. government agency responsible for investing in companies and projects abroad. The agency will appoint three board members — while Ukraine will have only two — and will oversee each project in which the fund invests.

MP from the Holos faction Yaroslav Zheleznyak commented on the NYT article and urged Ukrainians to treat the information "with some skepticism."

It seems to me that the NYT has some very outdated version of the agreement (similar to the one we were analyzing back on March 23), and they published this news on it today... Therefore, I would be somewhat skeptical about this.

Yaroslav Zheleznyak

People's Deputy of Ukraine