Name: Is the US minerals deal a win for Ukraine? Your questions answered | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-05-03T00:17:22.000Z
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Hello, and welcome to a special edition of UkraineCast, which is being broadcast both on the BBC News Live page and also on the BBC iPlayer.

I'm Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse.

And I'm James Landale, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent.

Lots to discuss today and so many of your questions that we're going to try and get to.

But of course, overnight, we learned that Ukraine and the US signed a much-anticipated natural resources deal.

You'll know there was months of tense negotiations.

And all of our listeners on UkraineCast have been asking us lots of questions about this development.

And what a lot of you want to know is whether or not this actually brings us any closer to peace.

Well, we're going to try and answer lots of your questions today.

So why don't we get straight into the first one?

My question is, why is Ukraine going ahead with the minerals deal?

As the US is siding with Russia, it appears that Ukraine has nothing to lose by refusing to give away its assets.

James Waterhouse, why is Ukraine going ahead with this deal?

Well, Ukraine would argue that it's got everything to gain.

This was an idea first pitched by President Zelensky towards the end of last year in his victory plan.

He was under pressure from Western allies to articulate his vision for how peace could be achieved.

And he said, look, we possess 5% of the world's critical minerals.

We need your cash to come and extract it.

It's worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

If you come and invest in us, that will mean investing in our future.

If we could just get in return some concrete security guarantees that you would be there in case Russia invaded in the future, that would be great.

Donald Trump's ears perked up at that very suggestion, not least because he's waging a trade war with China at the moment.

And China has control of the majority of the world's critical minerals, it is thought.

But in the time since, we've had that Oval Office row where it was going to be signed, then it wasn't.

This deal has evolved into it being far more wide-ranging, including coal, gas, energy projects.

And here we are now, where it seems Ukraine has got itself a deal it's happy with.

It is a deal that recognises Russia as the invader.

It paves the way for future military aid.

And it sets in action a long-term investment by America, which effectively ties it to the country.

And Ukraine will hope it will be enough for America to stand with Ukraine for once against Russia.

James Landau, that's what a lot of our listeners really want to know, what James has just alluded to.

I mean, my view is that it is a win, simply because a lot of the slightly more negative stuff which we have been reporting on in recent weeks and months seems to have been taken out of it.

Because if you remember some of the texts and versions and leaks and nudges that we've seen about this suggested, for example, that this deal ultimately would be about the United States effectively extorting Ukraine's natural resources to pay off the debt of the US military and financial contribution to Ukraine since February 22.

What we're talking about is any future investment by the United States in terms of military support or financial support that will now in future be in the sort of the US credit, the US capital investment side of this particular deal.

But we're talking about the future, not the past.

So we're not talking about paying off debts.

There was a lot of detail in the past saying that the Americans would have huge control over the board that was going to run this fund.

There were problems with would this deal prevent Ukraine joining the EU?

So in pure sort of economic financial terms, it seems to be a much better deal.

But obviously, there are all the diplomatic consequences and benefits too that follow from it.

But Olga, can we just clarify about the money?

Because President Trump said Biden handed them $350 billion.

We've made a deal we can get much more in theory than that.

Is that accurate what he's saying there, Olga?

So the number $350 billion in aid for Ukraine is interesting.

We've looked into it previously, and we have found no evidence to back up the claim that the US has given $350 or even $300 billion worth of aid to Ukraine.

There are different calculations out there.

But the ones that we've been able to find are much, much lower.

For example, Akil Institute, which is a German-based think tank that tracks US aid for Ukraine, that puts the number at $119 billion between January 22 and December 24.

And the US Department of Defense gives a bigger number, but it is still $182 billion, nowhere near $300 billion.

And these are funds that are appropriated as part of its response for the invasion.

But that covers training in Europe and replenishment of US defense stocks, which is much wider than just pure support, military support for Ukraine.

And James, can we just clarify, James Waterhouse, we call it a minerals deal, but it is actually much bigger than that.

It's become way much bigger than that now, isn't it?

We're talking about coal, oil, gas, and critical minerals.

We're talking about zinc, copper, lithium, uranium.

And it's thought that Ukraine can only extract at the moment a fraction of what it possesses.

Just because this agreement is signed, Donald Trump is not suddenly going to be presenting his voters with a cheque saying, look, we're getting the first bit of cash coming in from this scheme.

We've spoken to companies in Kiev and they say, look, it takes decades, a minimum of 20 years to work out where these materials are.

And I think Ukraine will be keeping an eye on American military aid in the future, perhaps arriving earlier than in 20 years time.

But clearly, I think this is a political coup for Donald Trump as well.

He's showing that there is a sustainable, as he sees it, business model here in investing in the future of Ukraine.

James, I think there was an intake of breath from all of us that follow closely what's happening in Ukraine.

Peter's Basilica, Donald Trump leaning in to President Zelensky, their eyes were locked.

But, you know, given the bad blood we've seen between them, it seemed like quite a nice moment, intense moment between them.

Was that moment in the Vatican, do you think, potentially the turning point?

Look, we'll never know until both sides give a very detailed account of precisely who said what to whom there and the moment.

But that's, you know, only they know that.

Look, clearly, we do know that Donald Trump is quite responsive to the most recent person he spoke to.

We have seen that, that occasionally his words echo recent meetings.

And if at that point, President Zelensky managed to sort of get it into President Trump's head that this is something he can get a win here.

Because if you think about it, Donald Trump is looking for wins across the entire diplomatic field at the moment, whether it is Gaza, whether it is Iran, whether it's tariffs.

And on Ukraine, you know, it's his hundredth day, week, you know, he wants something to point to.

If this deal is signed, as it has been, that gives him something to point to, because he can now say to the American people, look, when we start giving future aid and military support to Ukraine, right, we're going to get some payback.

It might take many, many years, but he can make that argument in a way that he hasn't been able to before.

And I think therefore, maybe that moment in the Vatican was just part of that turning point, where it wasn't just, though, about the mineral deal.

They were also talking about just how you put more pressure on Russia to respond more positively in the wider peace talks.

And Olga, have we had any official reaction yet from the Kremlin to the deal?

We haven't had yet any official reaction from the Kremlin, but we have had a reaction from some senior Russian officials, like former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who's quite close to President Putin.

And he used this as an opportunity to, again, criticise Ukraine and present the deal as not being that beneficial to Ukraine, because, and I will quote him here, he suggested that Washington has finally broken Kiev into paying for aid.

And then a similar reaction has been coming from some of the very well-known Russian TV presenters, like Olga Skabeva, who's really well-known in Russia.

And she said, well, a fair amount of natural resources actually are controlled by Russia because it's an occupied territory.

So Zelensky kind of sold Trump a cat in the back.

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Is the US minerals deal a win for Ukraine? Your questions answered | BBC News

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