US and Ukraine strike mineral deal
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What is the new mineral deal between the US and Ukraine?
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and in the early hours of Wednesday the 26th of February these are our main stories. Ukrainian officials say a deal's been reached between Kiev and Washington on the joint exploitation of Ukraine's mineral resources. Britain is to fast-track planned increases in defence spending two days before Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets President Trump in Washington. Also in this podcast, we hear from survivors of a prison fire in the city of Goma in eastern Congo.
We were woken from our sleep by a fire in the middle of the night. We started to scream, fire, help, but there was no one there and the doors were padlocked shut.
Ukrainian officials say a deal's been reached between Kiev and Washington on the joint exploitation of Ukraine's mineral resources. At the time of recording this podcast, the details haven't been made public, but reports suggest the US has dropped some of its more drastic demands. Rare earths, titanium, graphite and lithium would be hugely lucrative for investors and for Mr Trump. Speaking from the Oval Office, he said there could be a way of recouping hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. military aid to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion three years ago.
Lots of equipment, military equipment, and the right to fight on. originally the right to fight. Look, Ukraine, I will say they're very brave and they're good soldiers, but without the United States and its money and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short period of time.
Officials in Kyiv say the terms of a deal have been reached and President Zelensky will fly to Washington on Friday, just a week after Mr Trump called him a dictator. For more on this, I've been speaking to our correspondent in Washington, Bernd Busman, but first, Abdul Jalil Abdul Rasulov in Kyiv.
We have spoken to Ukrainian officials in the presidential office here and on the condition of anonymity. They did confirm that terms have been agreed. And judging from the media reports, we can say that the deal includes not just critical minerals and rare earth metals, but also it covers oil and gas. And Ukrainian media also is talking about ports and other related infrastructure. The agreement would establish a fund into which Ukraine would contribute 50% of revenues that will come from developing mineral resources and infrastructure. And importantly, there is this reference that this fund would invest, reinvest the capital in projects in Ukraine. And this is certainly a positive signal for Ukrainian officials.
And they're saying that overall, the conditions that this deal is offering is much better than what they had previously. And the fund that will be established as part of this deal will not be completely controlled by the U.S. as it was before. And now it's not clear the size of the U.S. stake in this fund, but I think this will be established later during the talks. The most important thing is that the figure of $500 billion is dropped. And previously, the U.S. wanted Ukraine to contribute this amount of money because they saw that this is how much the United States provided Ukraine in terms of military and economic aid. And Donald Trump kept saying that he wants this money back. And Ukraine resists saying that they received all aid in the form of grant, and therefore they have no financial obligations to return anything.
And with you, Bernd, in Washington, this sounds like standard Donald Trump tactics. Say something that everyone thinks is outrageous and step back from it a little and everyone's happy with the deal they get.
Well, it is. And that's kind of been his classic negotiating tactic in that they're very unclear on details and then something happens and then they go from there. We've so far really not had much firm details on this end either, besides what we heard from Donald Trump just a few minutes ago in the Oval Office. Now, he didn't say anything necessarily about what's in the deal or whether there's any security guarantees that would come after the deal. He just said it gives Ukraine the right to fight on. And President Zelensky, as he says, is likely to come on Friday to sign the deal.
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