The United States and Ukraine signed their long-awaited mineral deal on Wednesday according to the Treasury Department.
“As the President has said, the United States is committed to helping facilitate the end of this cruel and senseless war,” Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement on the signing.
“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,” he continued.
The two countries have been working on an agreement for months to secure a long-term U.S. economic investment by harvesting Ukraine’s raw earth minerals. The deal comes almost a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a deadly drone and missile attack on the country’s capital and days after President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s face-to-face meeting at the Vatican during the Pope Francis’s funeral.
Trump and Zelensky were originally slated to sign a deal in February at a White House meeting that ended in confrontation.
Zelensky apologized for the public fallout and resumed talks with U.S. counterparts weeks after departing in hopes of continued U.S. backing to end a three-year war with Russia.
Bessent said that “no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”
