The other day, Zelenskyj was a "dictator" who did a terrible job in Trump's eyes. Now, the US President is receiving the Ukrainian in the White House to conclude an agreement on the future relationship.
An agreement is said to be ready on the table, after many twists and turns. When Trump announced Zelenskyj's visit, he did so with a continued aggressive tone:
It's certainly okay for me if he wants to (come to Washington). He would want to sign this together with me, and I understand him. It's a big deal, a very big deal.
Had enormous demands
The US President has profiled himself as a tough negotiator, with a tactic that usually involves making sky-high demands that overwhelm the counterpart.
In the first stage, he demanded that Ukraine give the US rights to natural resources worth approximately 5,300 billion kronor – far more than what the US has given Ukraine so far. Zelenskyj flatly refused to "sell out" Ukraine, especially since he didn't get any security guarantees in return.
In the end, the presidents reportedly met somewhere in the middle, but Ukraine seems to have had to back down on its main demand.
General terms
The agreement contains no explicit security guarantees, reports among others Financial Times after seeing late drafts.
The countries will form a joint fund to which Ukraine will contribute half of all future revenues from newly discovered natural resources.
The US commitments are not described in detail, but as support for a "stable" Ukraine and the country's economic development.
Economic ties are guarantees in themselves, argued Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz last week:
What could be better for Ukraine than being in an economic partnership with the US?
Sees mafia methods
From a Ukrainian perspective, the agreement is only a small part of a larger picture where Ukraine strengthens its position and relationship with the new US government.
Donald Trump's USA has suddenly turned around and started to cozy up to Russia last week, with hints that Ukraine could be blamed for the invasion war. A meeting between Trump and Putin is said to be imminent – but Ukraine's president has gotten to go first today.
Both analysts and Ukrainian and American politicians liken Donald Trump's pressure on a vulnerable Ukraine to mafia methods and see a victim being forced to accept offers of "protection" for payment.
Ukraine has around five percent of the world's known mineral deposits. Before Russia's large-scale invasion in February 2022, the extraction of these accounted for around 6 percent of the country's GDP. It was then the tenth-largest iron producer in the world.
The country is also a major producer of manganese, titanium, and graphite.
The US is reported to be interested in rare earth metals, which 17 elements are classified as. Among these, there are deposits in Ukraine of sought-after substances such as neodymium, erbium, lanthanum, and yttrium.
However, several experts point out that it is difficult to determine how much rare earth metals there are under Ukrainian soil – and how much of them can be extracted.
Partly, the most mineral-rich areas are located in the war-torn and largely occupied parts of the country. Partly, new investments, with all infrastructure, will take several years to get started. The value also tends to fluctuate greatly depending on how much is extracted.
