Is Trump’s “Minerals Deal” a Fossil Fuel Shakedown? Antonia Juhasz on New U.S.-Ukraine Agreement

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: U.S. and Ukrainian officials have signed a deal to give the U.S. a stake in Ukraine’s mineral reserves as part of a joint investment fund with Kyiv. Details of the agreement have yet to be released, but, according to the Financial Times, the deal does not include explicit security guarantees from the United States. Trump has sought to frame the agreement as repayment of U.S. military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion starting in February 2022. The Ukrainian parliament will still need to ratify the deal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke after signing the agreement.

TREASURY SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Today’s agreement signals clearly to Russian leadership that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term. It’s time for this cruel and senseless war to end.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Antonia Juhasz, award-winning, longtime investigative journalist covering oil and energy. In March, Antonia wrote a piece for Rolling Stone headlined “Is Trump’s ‘Minerals Deal’ a Fossil Fuel Shakedown?” She has also been reporting on the Trump administration’s gutting of climate and environmental regulations and programs, joining us out from Washington, D.C.

Antonia, welcome back to Democracy Now!

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Thanks for having me. Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about this piece — or, this deal that was just signed yesterday between Ukrainian and U.S. officials, the rare earth minerals deal? What does it entail, and what do you think it represents?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Sure, and thank again for having me. Good morning.

So, this is actually a reconstruction investment fund set up between the U.S. and Ukraine. It’s been dubbed the “minerals deal” for a while, and that’s a bit of a misnomer. The original idea for the agreement started years ago, after the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Zelensky was trying to keep the Republican Congress willing to keep its investments going in military aid to Ukraine under the Biden administration, by saying, “OK, we’ll give you a stake, essentially, in the Ukrainian economy if you’ll keep supporting us.”

What it then morphed into under the Trump administration is really a grab of Ukraine’s natural resources, some of which involve — could involve rare earth minerals, but I would say the larger focus is Ukraine’s oil, gas, coal, its fossil fuels, and opening those up to U.S. investment, but, I would say, even more so to Russian control — the elimination of Russian sanctions is the larger goal for Putin — and then opening up Russia once again to U.S. oil companies.

And the deal that was signed yesterday has had some changes since the initial agreement was put forward in late February. And, of course, that was the deal that Zelensky had come to the White House to sign at the end of February. That was the intention of that meeting in the White House that then became this complete made-for-TV moment launched by JD Vance and President Trump to shame Zelensky, to degrade Zelensky, to put him down in his place to make Zelensky aware that Trump had realigned to Russia and that Zelensky was going to need to play ball on anything, if he wanted anything out of the White House. This deal was supposed to be signed that day. It wasn’t. There’s been some negotiation since then. The deal put on the table yesterday, I would say, is certainly better than the deal that was originally presented at the end of February, but it’s got a lot of, a lot of problems still.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Antonia, could you explain what some of those problems are? I mean, Zelensky, in this highly public and contentious meeting at the White House in February, had said initially — he described the draft agreement as asking him to, quote, “sell his country off.” So, if you could say what were the obstacles then, and what has been resolved in this final agreement, which still has to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. I mean, so, first, let’s just get the — you know, what the deal entails really clear. Again, it’s being called the minerals agreement, but Ukraine doesn’t have — we don’t know that it has a lot of minerals. It definitely has titanium. It’s producing titanium and graphite. It might have lithium. It might also have a host of what are called rare earth minerals. That’s 12 metals that are pretty critical for renewable energy. And there’s definitely an interest, and has been, in Ukraine to developing the potential of those rare earth minerals. And just to say, the assessment of those minerals is based on a 50-year-old assessment done when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. But there’s domestic interest in that, because there’s been a domestic interest in transitioning off of fossil fuels, not only for the benefit of Ukraine, but also to weaken Russia, which is so dependent on its fossil fuels. And so, there’s been interest in developing those rare earth minerals.

But this agreement also includes all of Ukraine’s natural resources — oil, gas, coal — and all of its infrastructure, as well. That’s its critical pipelines that carry gas, for example, through Russia — from Russia through Ukraine, its ports and that infrastructure, its gas holding facilities. And all of that is fair game — its nuclear facilities, its refineries. And the initial deal that was put on the table seemed to imply, essentially, that the United States — so, it creates a fund where all of Ukraine’s future profits from all of its natural resources and infrastructure would go into the fund. The U.S. would also contribute to the fund, but it was unclear how much money it would put in. And then it was also unclear and seemed to imply that the United States would have majority control over decisions on how those natural resources would be used, over how the money would be spent, and wouldn’t contribute really any money into it; rather, have that money be a payoff, which is how Trump was talking about it, for previous military aid to Ukraine.

What’s different now is that it seems clear that it’s going to be a 50/50 decision-making split between the United States and Ukraine over the natural resources, over the spending of the fund, that previous military aid won’t be paid off through the fund, but that any future U.S. military aid could be considered the contribution to the fund. So, the U.S. wouldn’t be putting money into reconstruction; it would be putting money into military aid. Now, that’s better, but, just to say, there is no history of an agreement like this before. The United States usually provides reconstruction aid, which is grants or loans that support reconstruction, and then, if it wants to invest in a country, it signs contracts to do that. You don’t have an agreement that says, “In exchange for us continuing to provide you military aid, we’re going to gain 50% of the decision-making and control over all of your future natural resources.” That’s unprecedented, honestly. Even if you go back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, even the U.S. occupation government of Iraq wasn’t this explicit in the type of control over resources that the U.S. government was going to be given. And, of course, the U.S. doesn’t occupy Ukraine. There’s a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The other sort of key problem is that in the discussions over the agreement, Trump continually says that, basically, what Ukraine has gotten is we will help you get peace, and you won’t lose your entire country to Russia. That’s, you know, what Ukraine gets. What it’s likely to have to cede is Crimea and the territory that was taken by the Russians since 2014 and 2022, which also includes some of Ukraine’s richest oil and gas reserves, offshore, onshore, coal and a lot of its industrial heart in the Donbas region. So, that would mean that Russia would continue to control those areas. And again, if Trump moves forward —

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds, Antonia.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Sorry. If Trump moves forward on eliminating sanctions, then all of Russia is opened up to U.S. oil and gas companies once again.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Antonia Juhasz, award-winning, longtime investigative journalist covering oil and energy. We will link to your piece that you did recently for Rolling Stone, “Is Trump’s ‘Minerals Deal’ a Fossil Fuel Shakedown?” and have you back to talk about Trump’s record on the environment.