A new Donald Trump deal offered to Ukraine in return for continued US support, but with no security guarantees in the face of Russia’s invasion, forces it to choose between life as a US economic colony or Russian occupation.
The latest version of the much-mutated minerals deal from the White House, which has been tabled in Kyiv, goes further than ever before in attempting to get Ukraine to sign up to back pay for US support in the war, plus four per cent.
On top of that it demands that the US, under Delaware law, controls most of Ukraine’s industrial output and much of its transport and communications system.
It is the result of a mafia-style protection shakedown on Ukraine by its former friends in Washington DC supported (by accident or design) by thuggery from the Kremlin.
Ukrainian parliamentarians told The Independent that even if, as is unlikely, president Volodymyr Zelensky signed up to the offer it would stand no chance of ratification by Ukraine’s legislature.
“It completely ignores international law and the Ukrainian constitution and Ukrainian law,” said Oleksandr Morezkho, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has often said that Ukraine is not a “real” country but a natural part of the Russian, or Soviet, empire. Its mineral and agricultural wealth have been seen by Russian colonialists as an essential part of Russian regional dominance.
The Trump administration clearly now sees vast rewards for American business if it can trade the commanding heights of the Ukrainian economy for back payment on war donations and a long term non-military US presence.
The minerals deal – which takes the form of a business contract under US law which has no jurisdiction in Ukraine – sets out that Ukraine and the US would split the royalties from oil, gas, and all minerals.
The profits would be paid to the US, in dollars, and put into a joint investment fund which would be run by Americans holding three of five seats on the governing board.
It further demands that the US contribution to Ukraine’s war effort be paid back immediately. Trump says, wrongly, that this is $350bn but the truth is closer to $130bn.
The US deal covers all infrastructure used on the exploitation of mineral products – trains, roads, airports, ports, pipelines, processing plants and refineries and gives America veto power over the sale of resources to other nations or entities.
“It makes no sense, because the idea is that Ukraine should give everything it has, all its natural resources, in exchange of the aid which has been already provided. But it’s absurd,” Morezkho said.
He said that he hoped the Trump scheme was a negotiating tactic and did not reflect an ultimatum to withhold military and intelligence aid, as the US has threatened, if Kyiv does not sign the contract.
“You know, [that would be like] seeing a person who has been killed by a maniac, and instead of helping this person who is bleeding and fighting, struggling for his life, you are trying to take his possessions,” the parliamentarian said.
But he hoped rather that the contract on offer “can be explained by way of stupidity and doesn’t need to be explained by bad intentions or conspiracy”.
Ukrainian politicians are doing all they can to avoid antagonising Trump’s administration but it’s a near hopeless effort.
Ukraine has signed up to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in the Black Sea, and on attacks against energy sectors in Ukraine and Russia. The Kremlin has refused the proposal and demanded the lifting on some banking sanctions – which the European Union has refused.
The ceasefire terms do not suit Ukraine but are part of Zelensky’s efforts to repair his relationship with the Trump administration after the disastrous bullying session he endured on his last visit to the Oval Office.
That session was led by JD Vance, the vice-president, who on Friday was visiting Greenland, part of Denmark, and a Nato member state. Along with Trump he has insisted that the minerals there are essential to America’s economy and that it is a strategic asset that should become part of the US by negotiation, or force.
If that’s his attitude to a Nato ally what hope is there for Ukraine?
Vance’s aggressive anti-Europeanism has concentrated minds in capitals across the continent on building alternative security structures independent of the US. This has included an increase in defence spending, support for Ukraine, and attempts to assemble a “reassurance force” for Kyiv if there is ever a peace deal with Russia.
But the demand to give the US control over Ukraine’s economy, forever, without even security guarantees, against reveals how little the Trump administration understands the country, said Lisa Yasko, another member of the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada.
“Our troops are not fighting for because Zelensky sent them to fight. We are fighting because we believe this is our right, that’s our land. You can’t just take away our freedom from us and the question of the soil is one of the issues we are so emotional about,” she said.
Recent estimates by the Kiel Institute suggest that the US supplies about 30 per cent of Ukraine’s military equipment and ammunition. It could survive a complete withdrawal of American military aid, although intelligence support from the US has been, and will continue to be, critical.
So it’s Russian muscle and American intelligence that Trump is using to extract a colonial price from Kyiv.
But Ukraine is fighting against Moscow’s attempts to return Ukraine to colonial status as under the Tsars and the Soviets.
Yasko said the American deal was certain to be rejected because it conjured up memories of the Holodomor, when the Kremlin ordered the expropriation of grain from Ukraine to Russia, killing and starving more than three million Ukrainians to death in the early 1930s.
“Our historical memory is very strong like that – we shouldn’t ever allow anyone to have full control over our soil,” she warned.
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