KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faced pressure on Friday to sign a deal to hand the United States preferential access to Ukraine\u2019s mineral deposits following harsh criticism from US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Trump wants Ukraine to give US companies access as compensation for the tens of billions of dollars of aid delivered under his predecessor Joe Biden. But Ukraine is seeking security guarantees from the United States in exchange for signing away precious rights to vast amounts of its natural resources and critical minerals.<\/p>\n
Mike Waltz, Trump\u2019s national security adviser on Friday predicted that Zelensky would sign the deal soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, here\u2019s the bottom line, President Zelensky is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term, and that is good for Ukraine,\u201d Waltz told a conference on the outskirts of Washington on Friday.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s top advisers have doubled down on their attacks on Zelensky in recent days, after Trump branded him a \u201cdictator\u201d and falsely claimed Ukraine had \u201cstarted\u201d the war with Russia.<\/p>\n
The war of words has stunned Kyiv and European capitals, a sign of just how rapidly Trump is overhauling Washington\u2019s long-standing support for Ukraine as he opens talks with Moscow on a settlement to the conflict. The United States had been Ukraine\u2019s most important financial, military and political backer since Russia invaded in Feb 2022, in what the West\u2019s top powers had condemned as an unprovoked and illegal war of aggression.<\/p>\n
A senior Ukrainian official said that despite the tensions between Zelensky and Trump, talks on a possible agreement were \u201congoing\u201d. \u201cThere is a constant exchange of drafts, we sent another one yesterday,\u201d the Kyiv source said, adding that Ukraine was now waiting for a US response.<\/p>\n
Kyiv had rejected a first attempt by Trump\u2019s team to strike a deal for Ukraine\u2019s natural resources, saying the proposal did not include security guarantees for Kyiv \u2014 a move that infuriated Trump.<\/p>\n
Three-year war<\/p>\n
Ukraine is pressing for Nato membership or for the deployment of Western troops and masses of advanced equipment as part of any wider ceasefire agreement with Russia. Zelensky said earlier this week he would not \u201csell\u201d Ukraine in any deal with the US.<\/p>\n
The spat risks undermining Western support for Kyiv at a critical juncture in the conflict, ahead of the three-year anniversary of Russia\u2019s invasion on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s army on Friday said it had captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine. Europe has also been left scrambling to respond, though Zelensky has held a flurry of calls in recent days with European leaders reiterating their support for Ukraine, including French President Emmanuel Macron and the leaders of Finland and Denmark.<\/p>\n
Macron will travel to Washington next week where he will tell Trump: \u201cYou can\u2019t be weak with President Putin,\u201d he said in an address on Thursday. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will also visit Trump, as Paris and London seek to marshal Europe\u2019s response to the Republican\u2019s first month in office.<\/p>\n
\u2018Despised\u2019<\/p>\n
Zelensky met this week in Kyiv with Trump\u2019s envoy Keith Kellogg whose description of meetings with Ukrainian officials came in stark contrast with rhetoric from his counterparts in Washington. In a social media post Kellogg called Zelensky \u201cthe embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war\u201d.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said earlier he had briefed Kellogg on the frontline situation and said \u201cstrong Ukraine-US relations benefit the entire world\u201d. But in Washington there was little sign Trump\u2019s team was looking to dial down tensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faced pressure on Friday to sign a deal to hand the United States preferential access to Ukraine\u2019s mineral deposits following harsh criticism from US President Donald Trump. Trump wants Ukraine to give US companies access as compensation for the tens of billions of dollars of aid delivered under his predecessor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5851,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5849\/revisions\/5851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}