Trump’s Ukraine minerals deal is pure extortion

So the on-again-off-again US-Ukrainian resources deal has been signed. It is perhaps appropriate that it was done without fanfare, marked by emailed press release. While its terms are rather better than originally mooted, it still shows not that ‘the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centred on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine’ as US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent put it, but to neo-colonial exploitation. For all that, Kyiv has some reason to be satisfied by what it considers less of an economic deal and more a necessary piece of performative submission to keep Donald Trump engaged with their cause.

Put at its simplest, Ukraine’s natural resources – oil, gas, rare earths – will now come under the remit of a new US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. While Kyiv will still decide who gets to exploit them, any revenues accrued from new exploitation projects will be split 50-50 between the US and Ukraine.