Donald Trump has said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is likely to visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal to pay for US military aid to defend against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The Kremlin said it declined to comment on any aspect of a proposed US-Ukraine deal allowing the US to extract rare minerals from Ukraine in lieu of payment for military support until there were official statements.
The cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine after three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion will be $524bn over the next decade, according to a report released by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission, and the United Nations.
The announcement followed days of negotiations between the US and Ukraine in which Zelenskyy alleged the US was pressuring him to sign a deal worth more than $500bn that would force “10 generations” of Ukrainians to pay it back.
Russia’s president on Monday evening offered to sell Russian rare earth minerals to US companies, including minerals from the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
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