U.S. and Ukraine sign landmark minerals deal after months of fraught negotiations

The U.S. and Ukraine have signed a long-awaited minerals deal, providing Washington with preferential access to Kyiv's natural resources in exchange for the formation of a reconstruction investment fund.

The highly anticipated agreement, long coveted by U.S. President Donald Trump, comes after months of tense negotiations and more than three years since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said Wednesday that the economic partnership would allow the two countries to invest together to accelerate Ukraine's economic recovery and help to "facilitate the end of this cruel and senseless war."

"This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term," Bessent said in a statement.

Since his inauguration in January, Trump has pushed for a minerals deal with Ukraine, saying an agreement to jointly develop and monetize Kyiv's deposits of rare earths, critical minerals, oil, gas and other natural resources would act, effectively, as compensation for U.S. aid to Ukraine throughout the war with Russia.

In comments at a town hall on the NewsNation network, Trump said the deal represents payback for the money the U.S. has spent so far on supporting Ukraine's war effort.

Trump added that he "wanted to be protected. I didn't want to be out there and look foolish."

The U.S. president also confirmed that he held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the minerals deal when they both attended Pope Francis' funeral last week.

Zelenskyy signaled that the outline of a deal had already been agreed in mid-April.

Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine's minister of economic development and trade, said Wednesday that the economic deal is capable of delivering success for both the U.S. and Ukraine.

"It is important that the agreement will become a signal to other global players that it is reliable to cooperate with Ukraine in the long term — for decades," Svyrydenko said via social media platform X, according to a Google translation.

As part of the agreement, Svyrydenko said it is Ukraine "that determines where and what to extract."

She added that the fund is being created on 50-50 basis, reflecting an equal partnership between Washington and Kyiv. Neither party will hold a dominant vote, Svyrydenko said.

Ed Verona, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center with a particular focus on Ukrainian reconstruction aid, said Kyiv appeared to have "little choice but to acquiesce to terms that reduce it to the status of a virtual colony."

Looking ahead, several "nettlesome" questions mean the deal's future is likely uncertain, Verona said.

These include whether the minerals deal will have to be ratified by Ukraine's legislature, whether amendments would be considered in such a vote and whether investors would be willing to commit to future projects.

"The history of mineral resources deals offers ample reason to doubt that this one would stand up well over the period typically required to develop large and capital-intensive projects with lead times of up to a decade," Verona said.

"Russia, ironically, provides an example of how resource-related deals can come unraveled. Production sharing agreements signed during the difficult transitional period of the 1990s were subsequently repudiated by [President Vladimir] Putin's regime, with Western partners forced to surrender control and majority ownership in major projects," he said.

"I suspect that few serious U.S. investors will put their shareholders' money at risk based on such a clearly unbalanced 'deal.'"

— CNBC's Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.