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Trump’s Rewritten ‘Deal’ With Ukraine Is Imposed Indentured Servitude
The Trump administration wants to press Ukraine into infinite indentured servitude for payments and weapons previously delivered by the Biden administration with no conditions attached to them.
Hedge fund mogul and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent has (re-)written the 'mineral deal':
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday Ukraine may sign an economic deal next week …
"We have passed along a completed document for the economic partnership (that) is currently being reviewed by Ukrainians, and we hope to go to full discussions and perhaps even get signatures next week," Bessent said.
Trump said on Monday he expects a U.S.-Ukraine revenue-sharing agreement on Ukrainian critical minerals to be signed soon.
The (former) Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski acknowledged the arrival of the agreement (machine translation):
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the United States offered Ukraine a new version of the agreement on minerals . During the press conference , he stressed that the issue of Ukrainian nuclear power plants is not in it.
"This is a big full deal for the American side, from the steps that were taken earlier. A framework agreement, you remember, and after the framework agreement, the full agreement is developed. Now the American side has offered our side a big deal at once, their vision," Zelensky said.
The deal, see below, is anything but an 'offer'.
Zelenski should have signed the earlier 'framework agreement'. It would have allowed to later stall on the implementation. Now he will be pressed to sign on to the details.
The new 'big deal at once' is a 'horror' for Ukraine (machine translation):
A new version of the agreement on minerals between Ukraine and the United States, in which, as reported by ZN.UA, now the American side wants control not only over the extraction of rare earth metals, but all the minerals of Ukraine and the infrastructure associated with their extraction, provides for unlimited US control over Ukrainian resursans and with the right of veto of the Americans on their extraction by Ukraine. At the same time, the United States does not offer any security guarantees, and such a monopoly should be a "payment" for the already provided US assistance to Ukraine, said Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a People's Deputy of Ukraine.
"I received this document from our officials yesterday.This is not the final document. And I hope the Ukrainian side will demand and achieve significant changes to it. But the text that I saw is straight horror. All 18 sections … this is no longer a framework memorandum of intent (which was before the scandalous meeting in the Oval Office). This is a very big and very clear deal. And it is not in our direction," he wrote in his Telegram.
The legal text has 60(!) pages. Its main points, according to Zheleznyak, are these (machine translation):
- The Fund is managed by five people, three of whom are from the United States and will have full veto power;
- We are talking about all minerals, including oil, gas and undeveloped deposits throughout Ukraine;
- we are talking about mining by both public and private campaigns;
- the Fund's money will be immediately converted into foreign currency and withdrawn abroad. If suddenly, for some reason, something did not reach the Ukrainian side, Ukraine pays extra;
- US contribution – assistance already provided to us from 2022 (according to the Kiel Institute, US assistance to Ukraine in 2022-2024 is estimated at $ 119.7 billion)
- The United States can choose to make a profit. At the same time, they will receive "royalties" from the Fund first (and then Ukraine) +4%.
- The agreement will be valid indefinitely
- Changes to the agreement or its completion are only possible with the permission of the United States;
- US priority right to all new infrastructure projects and veto the sale of resources to other countries.
This 'deal' is pure extortion and robbery. It would bind Ukraine indefinitely. It would also discourage any investment in any natural deposits in Ukraine. There is no chance that any such deal will be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament.
Why wonders then: Why does the Trump administration even bother?
Start of translation:
The loot is divided…the end is near.
Human lives for metal: EU reminds of its “claims” to Ukrainian rare earths
Andrey Nizamutdinov on why the West’s actions toward Ukraine resemble the behavior of a pack of predators
The race between Western countries, whose main prize is access to Ukraine’s natural resources, is intensifying: Following the US and Great Britain, the EU has also decided to stress its claims to rare earths and other valuable metals found in Ukraine. It’s not hard to understand why Europeans are now so excited: the prospect of a conflict resolution is imminent – and they must act quickly to secure their piece of the pie.
The right of first night
The issue of rare earths, which can be mined from Ukrainian soil, attracted considerable public attention last fall when Vladimir Zelensky pompously unveiled another “victory plan” over Russia in the West. With support slowly but steadily declining on all sides, he made a generous offer to his sponsors: Give us money and weapons, and in return, we’ll give you access to natural resources vital to the military-industrial complex and other high-tech industries.
Admittedly, this proposal didn’t generate much interest at the time: In Europe, people held their breath, eagerly following the course of the US presidential election campaign, and kept their fingers crossed for Kamala Harris in the vague hope that she would still prevail against the hated Donald Trump; the mere thought of this sent shivers down the European spines. The US campaign participants themselves, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about Zelensky and his crazy ideas at the time.
Everything changed when the victorious Trump took a deep breath, looked around, and saw in a deal with Ukrainian rare earths a way to offset the costs the US had incurred in supporting Kyiv. He immediately began to put pressure on Zelensky to force him into a deal.
Trump’s persistence was not at all pleasing to London, which had managed to sign its own 100-year partnership agreement with Kyiv earlier this year. It included a clause on privileged access to Ukraine’s rich natural resources. According to one of the many versions, Zelensky received instructions in London regarding his conduct at the first meeting with Trump, where the rare earths agreement was supposed to have been signed. And the British did such a good job that Zelensky was ejected from the Oval Office, thus preventing the signing.
Brussels tried for a time to stay out of the matter. They even publicly declared that they were “not competing with the US” in the fight for Ukrainian rare earths. Nevertheless, Stéphane Sejourné, the EU Commissioner for Prosperity and Industry, traveled to Kyiv at the end of February and recalled that Ukraine had already signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the EU in 2021, which also provides for cooperation in the field of mineral extraction. At the end of the trip, Sejourné said: “In Kyiv, I emphasized the need to implement this document. It covers a number of projects, including graphite mining. We expect that this will enable us to meet up to 10 percent of the EU’s needs by the end of 2030.”
And just as information emerged that the Trump administration had drafted a new 40-page draft agreement with Kyiv, which envisaged not only natural resources but also the transfer of Ukrainian nuclear power plants under US control, Sejourné once again reiterated that the right to the first night belonged to the EU: “With regard to Ukraine, we have already signed a memorandum of understanding on rare earths. <...> The EU expects this raw materials partnership with Ukraine to develop further.”
A questionable plan
The Frenchman Sejourné is considered a protégé and one of President Emmanuel Macron’s closest confidants. At Macron’s instigation, he took over the post of Foreign Minister and became chairman of the pro-presidential Renaissance party. However, the party performed poorly in the European Parliament elections and subsequently in the early elections to the French National Assembly. As a result, Sejourné was forced to resign from both his positions in the government and the party. However, that didn’t stop him from taking a comfortable job in Brussels, where he continues to lobby covertly or openly for French interests—including France’s interest in rare earths.
The French Defense Minister recently demonstrated that these interests exist.
quite publicly: “I myself have a defense industry that will need access to a certain amount of raw materials in the coming years. Our defense industry will need a certain amount of key raw materials for our own weapons systems, not just in 2026, but also in the next 30 or 40 years, and we must diversify [the sources of supply for these].” Without raw materials from Ukraine, there can be no EU rearmament.
Of course, the interest in rare metals is not limited to France, but also extends to other EU countries. The French are even the first to admit this. Sejourné, for example, explained in an interview with the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”: “Our goal is to produce in Europe for Europe. This is important for the military-industrial complex. And we must not be dependent on other countries, neither Russia, nor China, nor the USA.”
According to him, the EU has already prepared 49 projects, for the implementation of which two billion euros are earmarked. The EU Commissioner further explained, specifically with regard to rare earths: “Our goal is to cover 10 percent of our needs for these resources through extraction, 40 percent through processing, and 25 percent through recycling by 2030. This means we want to be able to cover 65 percent of our rare earth needs ourselves.”
And in implementing these plans, Brussels is relying, among other things, on Ukraine’s natural resources.
According to Sejourné, the European Commission will establish a joint procurement center for critical resources at the end of 2026: “It will be based on roughly the same model that the EU Commission used for the procurement of vaccines. The EU Commission will jointly decide from whom and in what quantities to purchase.”
Brussels’ desire to bring such an important area under its control is understandable. However, the system for purchasing coronavirus vaccines proved extremely opaque, leading to corruption allegations and a lawsuit against Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission (which, however, ended without consequences for her).
A Pack of Predators
The questionable nature of this plan is obvious, as it is no coincidence that European experts warn that, if implemented, the European Commission, for example, would gain control over the European military-industrial complex. This is good for von der Leyen, who recently presented a large-scale program for the militarization of Europe. However, for the countries that are trying to defend their own interests to varying degrees, it is the exact opposite.
For this reason, some would prefer to act independently, as Paris and London are currently doing by actively promoting the idea of sending European troops to Ukraine. Their persistence in this matter makes it seem as if they aren’t talking about peacekeepers or observers ensuring compliance with the ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, but rather about police forces that will take over the protection of deposits of valuable minerals. The French frequently used this system in Africa until recently. But then the French contingents were expelled. So why not find a new use for them in Ukraine?
The approaches of the EU, Great Britain, and the US in dividing up Ukraine’s rare earths resemble the behavior of a pack of predators, first jointly chasing their prey into powerlessness, then pushing each other away to grab a bigger and fatter piece. The question now is whether Ukrainians will finally understand this or will they continue to die for metals whose proceeds end up in the pockets of Zelensky’s accomplices and his Western patrons.
End of translation
https://anti-spiegel.ru/2025/nun-erinnert-auch-die-eu-an-ihre-ansprueche-auf-ukrainische-seltene-erden/#comment-340855
Posted by: berthold | Mar 27 2025 17:37 utc | 51
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