Name: US and Ukraine sign long-awaiting natural resources deal | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-05-03T00:16:18.000Z
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The United States has signed a long-awaited deal with Ukraine securing access to the country's natural resources.

The agreement includes the creation of a shared investment fund to ensure Ukraine's economic recovery after the war with Russia.

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It was signed by US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Srividenko, who flew to Washington to sign the deal on Wednesday.

The deal gives the US access to the country's energy infrastructure, oil and gas, as well as precious metals.

Ukraine says the partnership will be equal on a 50-50 basis.

The resources will remain the property of Ukraine.

In exchange, a joint investment fund will be set up to pay for future US military assistance and reconstruction efforts.

Crucially, unlike previous drafts, the fund will not be used to pay off Ukrainian debts for the billions of dollars of US assistance already provided.

Here's our North America correspondent, Jake Kwok.

Because you're in no position to dictate that.

It appears certain that no deal could ever come after this.

President Zelensky left, leaving the minerals deal on the table.

Trump and Zelensky were meeting at the Pope's funeral last week.

Just the two of them, 15 minutes, no interruption.

And today, Ukrainians have heard the warmest language Washington has spoken since President Trump came to power.

Today's agreement signals clearly to Russian leadership that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term.

Kyiv will put up the money by selling licenses to develop its oil, gas and minerals.

And the U.S. will put up either cash or any future weapons they send to Ukraine.

The joint investment fund will pay for reconstruction and energy projects and pay dividends to investors.

It's a much better deal than the one Mr. Trump proposed earlier, which would have put Ukraine in debt for the weapons the U.S. already provided.

It's a moment of diplomatic victory for President Zelensky, who wanted to tie Washington to his side by giving them a skin in the game.

It will take years before the deal can bear fruit, but its signal is immediate.

Washington is forcing Mr. Putin to rethink his calculation, and the peace deal may be closer.

And for the people in this city, the deal cannot come fast enough.

Well, this deal comes as Russia has continued to carry out attacks in Ukraine, hitting more civilian targets.

Officials in the city of Odessa say at least two people have been killed, five others wounded in an overnight drone strike.

The regional governor said the attack damaged residential buildings and a school, adding that fires had broken out in some areas.

Odessa, a strategically important port city on the Black Sea, has been repeatedly attacked since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

An overnight drone attack is also being reported in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where the authorities say a petrol station was hit there.

Well, we can speak now to Hanna Szelest, who's in Odessa, also director of security programs at the Foreign Policy Council Ukrainian PRISM and editor-in-chief at Ukraine Analytica.

Thank you very much for coming on the programme.

So we're going to talk about the deal, but first of all, you are in Odessa, just underlining there another difficult night.

It was one of the worst nights, at least the last year.

We are approximately one kilometre from one of the targets where Russians aimed their shahids.

As we know, it is the school and the residential building that burned.

Another high scrapper in a different district, around 15 kilometres from us, been targeted.

And the sounds, I would say that living three years here in Odessa, that was one of the worst nights for me, because you heard both the very heavy explosions, that even one kilometre from the epicentre of this, my window's been trembling, really scary.

But also when you hear the sounds of the shahids when they're getting lower, that's really a very terrifying sound.

And we used to think that we already acquainted to most of this fear that Russia is sending against the residential areas.

Anna, thank you for painting that picture for us.

Let's turn now to the diplomacy and that deal that's been signed.

Luckily, there are more good news in it, and probably that was worth waiting these additional months to make this deal beneficial for both sides.

I would say that it is a huge success of the Ukrainian negotiating team, because first of all, it is nothing about the debt that Ukraine never had against the US.

The second, that it is the equal partnership 50-50 for Ukraine, both in terms of the earnings and in terms of the management.

It is the international agreement, bilateral agreement, not some kind of fund created by the Delaware law.

And it is not direct control only of the United States.

Plus, it is the clear formulations there that European integration of Ukraine should be the primer.

So meaning that nothing inside of this deal can contradict the European integration and our obligations under the European Union membership in the future, and also that the money will go first and foremost for the reinvesting in Ukraine and in rebuilding of Ukraine.

The agreement, the draft that we saw just one month ago, was absolutely different.

It was total control of the US, and it was the possibility to invest anywhere rather than in Ukraine.

Why I said that there were bad news as well, because there is nothing about security guarantees as Ukraine really wanted originally.

But we understand that the current US administration considers investments the best security guarantees.

Because that has been the argument that just having the US involved in that way in itself provides a security guarantee.

Let me be sceptical about this, because I know what targets Russia aimed at the very first months of the war.

There were a lot of the US investments there, including Coca-Cola manufacturing, for example, and others.

So knowing Russians, I understand that this type of the guarantees is not the guarantee for them.

They understand only military involvement.

However, there is one article in this agreement, at least how we know it from the Vice Prime Minister, that US can contribute by weapons, not only by money in this fund.

So if this would be the real contribution, that definitely would amplify the security component of this agreement.

Hannah Schless, thank you so much for coming on the programme.

So we heard one assessment there of the deal.

Well, I think your guest there gave a pretty graphic picture of the fact that this is a business deal.

I mean, we had airstrikes just in the background last night, literally as this deal was being signed, just outside Kyiv, loud explosions, anti-aircraft fire going up.

But I think, look, the Ukrainians feel they've got a better deal than they were hoping for, certainly a better deal that was on the table when we had that slanging match in the Oval Office between President Zelensky and President Trump back in February.

And I think the reason why it's better now is that back then, President Trump was talking about this being a deal that would allow Ukraine to pay back the billions of dollars of money that had been used for US military assistance over the past three years.

Well, under this deal, that won't happen.

The money that will be generated, that will be put into this investment fund could be used for future military assistance, future humanitarian assistance, and also reconstruction in Ukraine.

So as your guest was saying there, there are no explicit security guarantees in this deal for Ukraine.

But I think implicitly, if America has a bigger stake, a bigger financial stake in this country, then they're going to want to protect those interests.

And we're talking about a deal that is not short-term.

So I think they've much more reason to feel satisfied here in Kyiv than perhaps they do in the Kremlin this morning.

Well, John, you said that long-term deal.

Where does this fit in when we think of things like ceasefires and peace agreements?

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US and Ukraine sign long-awaiting natural resources deal | BBC News

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