The US national security adviser Mike Waltz claimed on Friday that Volodymyr Zelenskyj is ready to sign an agreement giving the USA rights to and access to the rare earth elements and minerals found in Ukraine.
Listen, this is what's going on, President Zelenskyj will sign the agreement, and you'll see it happen within a very short time, and it's good for Ukraine, said Waltz at the right-wing conference CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) held on the outskirts of Washington DC.
The tone and message from Waltz and the USA had thus drastically changed from Thursday. Then, the security adviser said that President Trump was "very frustrated" over Ukraine not having accepted an American proposal.
President Trump is obviously very frustrated right now over President Zelenskyj, the fact that he hasn't come to the negotiating table, that he hasn't been willing to take this opportunity that we've offered, claimed Waltz then.
Donald Trump is said to have demanded rights to Ukrainian raw materials, assets, and infrastructure – in exchange for continued aid in the war against Russia.
Kyiv had previously rejected proposals from Washington DC as the draft agreements had lacked security guarantees from the American President Donald Trump's government.
I defend Ukraine, I cannot sell our country, said Zelenskyj then.
Since then, both Kyiv and Washington DC have discussed the issue both informally and likely at the meeting between Zelenskyj and the US envoy Keith Kellogg on Thursday.
In Ukraine, there are deposits of a long range of coveted substances, such as neodymium, erbium, lanthanum, and yttrium.
Europe has relatively little of the lithium so vital for batteries, but Ukraine holds approximately one-third of the occurrence in our part of the world.
Another example is graphite, which is still refined to 90 percent in China. Ukraine is among the five countries in the world with the most graphite.
Ukraine's mineral resources have been valued at hundreds of billions of kronor. However, all figures should be interpreted with great caution, since prices vary so greatly – for example, the lithium price has plummeted by 90 percent as extraction has been scaled up worldwide in recent years.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
