“I can’t sell our country” Ukraine’s Zelenskiy says on US minerals deal

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo — Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 27, 2024. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

KYIV (Reuters) -     President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday rejected U.S. demands for $500 billion in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, saying the United States had supplied nowhere near that sum so far and offered no specific security guarantees in the agreement.

The Ukrainian leader, who is under major pressure from Trump's White House, said Washington had supplied his country with $67 billion in weapons and $31.5 billion in direct budget support throughout the nearly three-year war with Russia. 

"You can't call this 500 billion and ask us to return 500 billion in minerals or something else. This is not a serious conversation," Zelenskiy said.

Trump has said he wants $500 billion in rare earth minerals from Kyiv to secure Washington's assistance and his team last week proposed a deal that Kyiv declined to sign in its current form. 

Zelenskiy has said the proposed deal did not contain the security provisions Ukraine desperately needs to protect it from Russian aggression. He said the draft deal proposed the U.S. taking ownership of 50% of Ukraine's critical minerals.

"I defend Ukraine, I can't sell our country. I said OK, give us some sort of positive. You write some sort of guarantees, and we will write a memorandum... some sort of percentages," he said. 

"I was told: only 50 (percent). I said: OK, no. Let the lawyers work some more, they did not do all the necessary work. I am just the decision maker, I don't work on the details of this document. Let them work on it."

The matter of how much aid the United States has supplied to Ukraine is taking on important diplomatic significance as Kyiv tries to retain the backing of what has been its most important ally.     

In his comments on Tuesday, Trump questioned where the money that has been given to Ukraine had gone.

Zelenskiy, addressing those comments, said that the combined aid from the U.S. and the European Union amounted to $200 billion out of a total $320 billion spent on weaponry for the war effort. 

Ukrainians shouldered the rest of the costs of around $120 billion, he said. 

 (Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko, Max Hunder and Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Toby Chopra and Philippa Fletcher)