LONDON, February 20. /TASS/. The administration of US President Donald Trump wants to reach a minerals deal with Ukraine before the potential start of peace talks, opting for a simplified agreement and agreeing on the details later, Reuters reported, citing sources.
Vladimir Zelensky last week rejected Washington's initial proposal, which the news agency described as "detailed." According to Reuters sources, the incident showed that it would take time to reach a full-fledged agreement. "But US President Donald Trump wants a pact with Ukraine in place before potentially authorizing more US military support for Kiev or moving ahead with a bid to broker formal peace talks between Ukraine and Russia to end the three-year-old war," the news agency pointed out.
One of the agency's sources said that Kiev was ready to make a deal, but it should not be as "rapacious" as Washington's initial proposal. Reuters noted that the details of the original proposal are unknown, and the White House has not responded to journalists' inquiries. A simplified deal is only one of the options being considered by the US administration. The news agency did not specify what alternative ideas are being discussed in Washington. The White House expects an agreement to be reached in the coming weeks, which the agency described as an "unusually quick timeline" for such deals.
According to Reuters, the "simplified" deal will allow the US to bypass a number of legal and logistical hurdles and give Washington time to agree on details of the fields' development, including profit sharing.
In early February, Trump said that Washington was interested in obtaining rare-earth metals from Ukraine. Zelensky, in turn, noted his readiness to make a deal and suggested that the outcome of negotiations on this issue could be determined at the Munich Security Conference on February 14-16. However, on February 14 in Munich, the Kiev authorities rejected the US administration's plan to help Ukraine in exchange for Washington's right to 50% of Ukraine's rare-earth metals. At the same time, Zelensky pointed out that there were no security guarantees in the proposed agreement. Kiev said it was working on a counterproposal.