US President Donald Trump has said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Washington on Friday to sign a mineral deal that has inflamed tensions between the leaders over recent weeks.
"President Zelenskyy is going to be coming on Friday. That's now confirmed, and we're going to be signing an agreement, which will be a very big agreement," Trump told reporters on Wednesday as he convened his cabinet for the first time since he assumed office last month.
Trump thanked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for their work on forging the agreement, which he said will include rights for Ukraine's rare earth minerals and other natural resources.
"The previous administration put us in a very bad position, but we've been able to make a deal where we're going to get our money back, and we're going to get a lot of money in the future. And I think that's appropriate, because we have taxpayers that shouldn't be footing the bill, and they shouldn't be putting the bill that more than the Europeans are paying," he said.
"So, it's all been worked out. We're happy about it, and I think that very importantly, we're going to be able to make a deal," he added.
'This is a start'
However, officials late on Tuesday said they had come to an agreement following protracted negotiations but Zelenskyy, who has come under mounting pressure from US officials to sign the accord, told reporters in Kiev that more difficult work lay ahead.
"This is a start, this is a framework agreement," he told journalists at the presidential administration.
"This deal could be a great success or simply disappear. Whether it is a big success, I think, depends on our conversation with president Trump. We'll draw conclusions after," he said.
Zelenskyy's refusal to sign a first draft of the accord delivered to him in Kiev by the US treasury secretary was met with anger by Trump, who called the Ukrainian leader a "dictator" afterwards.
The Kremlin has also sought to woo Trump by lavishing praise on the US leader and by encouraging American investments in natural resources in Ukrainian territory controlled by Russian forces.
Russian and US diplomats will meet in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss resolving issues related to their embassies, Russia's foreign minister said, as tensions ease between the two countries.
Ukraine is sitting on massive reserves of critical rare earth minerals that could total trillions of dollars. It holds about 5 percent of the world’s total mineral resources, according to a 2024 World Economic Forum report.
Besides having one of the largest confirmed reserves of lithium, Ukraine boasts semiconductor-grade neon gas that is critical for chip production, beryllium, uranium, zirconium, apatite, iron ore and manganese.
