Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday is set to meet with President Donald Trump for the first time since he re-entered the White House to sign what could be a key minerals deal to help end Russia’s war.
Though some details of the agreement have emerged since the meeting was announced this week, the exact terms remain unclear, and European leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, are waiting to see what could come out of this agreement, particularly when it comes to security demands.
Trump on Wednesday told reporters that Zelenskyy could ‘forget about’ any ambitions to join NATO, but the Ukrainian president also said that day that he needs security guarantees, otherwise ‘we won’t have a ceasefire, nothing will work, nothing.’
‘I want to find a NATO path or something similar,’ Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian leadership has long sought NATO membership, and in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit the alliance agreed Ukraine would eventually become a member of NATO, a defense partnership Zelenskyy has since argued is the best defense against a future Russian invasion.
Trump told reporters that by entering into a minerals deal with Washington, Kyiv will be granted ‘automatic security’ guarantees by the mere presence of American extractors on Ukrainian soil.
‘Nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there,’ Trump said. ‘We’ll be there in that way.’
But it remains unclear if this ‘guarantee’ will be enough to comfort Zelenskyy, and according to former CIA Moscow Station Chief Dan Hoffman, there are too many outstanding factors to determine whether Putin would be deterred, including Kyiv’s rearmament capabilities and whether NATO nations would agree to send in troops to Ukraine.
‘As far as deterring Putin from attacking again [and] as far as Ukraine’s relationship with the United States, especially with this administration, you want the U.S. to have economic skin in the game,’ Hoffman said. ‘That’s how you walk down that path of closer bilateral relationship, and one where it’s certainly in our interest … for [Ukraine] to be an independent, sovereign nation.’
Trump said on Wednesday that European allies, including the U.K. and France, will be watching U.S. negotiations with Ukraine and Russia ‘very closely.’
‘They volunteered to put so-called peacekeepers on the site. And I think that’s a good thing,’ he added.
In response to questions by Fox News Digital over the European Union’s position on a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal, top diplomat for the EU, Kaja Kallas, said the agreement could prove positive for Kyiv so long as it puts Ukraine in a position of strength when it comes to countering Russia at the negotiating table.
‘[The] U.S. also has a very clear self-interest in play, and that hopefully makes U.S. support Ukraine more, because economic ties are making this stronger,’ she said. ‘And then it all works.’
‘Right now, it is a very important message that we send that we are behind Ukraine, to make them strong enough to be able to say no to a bad deal,’ she added.
But it’s not just European allies watching the dealings unfold; Putin is also keeping a close eye on a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal.
Putin’s representatives reportedly proposed a similar deal to the Trump administration while meeting in Saudi Arabia last week, and they said a deal could be brokered to give the U.S. access to minerals in Ukrainian regions now occupied by invading Russian forces, including Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.
The Trump administration has reportedly not ruled out an economic deal with Moscow.
Hoffman said it is in Zelenskyy’s strategic interest to make a deal with Trump, as it would hamper Putin’s strategic goals.
‘[Putin] doesn’t want Ukraine to have commercial relationships with Europe and the United States,’ he said. ‘That was part of why he wanted to topple the central government in Kyiv and then install a puppet regime that was beholden to Russia.
‘The more links Ukraine has to the West … commercial links, diplomatic and strategic military links … it’s not good for Putin,’ Hoffman added.