Name: Are the US and Ukraine about to sign a minerals deal? | BBC Newscast
Uploaded: 2025-05-03T00:21:49.000Z
Duration: 28 min 2 s
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Remember that massive bust up in the Oval Office between Presidents Trump and Zelensky?

That was when they were meant to be signing a deal related to Ukraine's natural resources.

That deal looks like it is about to be signed now, months later.

And also it's changed because the BBC has seen a draft.

We'll explain what's going on in this episode of the BBC's daily news podcast, Newscast.

Let's dive into the goings on in Washington DC.

We're joined from there by the BBC's chief news presenter in the US.

And here in the studio is James Landale, diplomatic correspondent.

Right, a few things to talk about, Katrina.

The GDP figures for America showing that the economy contracted for the first three months of this year.

Is that the happy 100 days of your presidency present Donald Trump was looking for?

Well, it gave him something further to bash Joe Biden with.

So maybe it was a present for him in that regard.

He has landed the blame for those figures firmly at the feet of the past president.

But obviously, he does have to take a lot of blame for that himself.

And to be honest, it's no surprise everyone was expecting it, including the president himself, by the way, who has refused to rule out the prospect of a recession in this country this year.

But I mean, you don't need these statistics.

You can see it around you in real life here in the economy that people are putting off purchases, particularly big purchases, because of the uncertainty that's here created by those tariffs created by the crashes on the stock market.

And just a general unknown, unknown as to what may lie ahead.

Although the administration do put forward an argument for why tariffs aren't to blame for this fallen GDP, as far as they see it, they do have a sort of kind of claim about that.

Yeah, and they're they're talking about creating strategic uncertainty and that, you know, the full impact of tariffs haven't been felt because President Trump has put a delay on all of this.

And it's all part of a great master plan.

I mean, the one thing with these economic indicators is you do have to take a longer view of things rather than just in the short term, which is what we have now.

But you can't escape the fact that the American economy hasn't shrunk like this since 2022.

So it has been almost exactly three years.

James, the other thing that seems to be going on is there are reports that a minister from

Ukraine is flying to Washington to finally sign this minerals deal.

Well, we certainly know that the minister is flying there.

Look, there are various texts doing the round.

The talk now of a main document and then two other documents.

So there's a bit of confusion about precisely what's been signed and what's been agreed.

There's certainly still some uncertainty about it.

We don't know definitively whether this is the final one.

There's some uncertainty about whether this is going to be signed.

So there's still a lot of, you know, question marks.

But clearly, they're homing in on some kind of a deal.

And what seems to be really interesting about it is that if this version that the BBC has seen and others have seen holds, then there's quite a concession from the Americans.

Essentially, the original drafts essentially said, we're going to set up a joint fund that will collectively exploit natural resources in Ukraine.

So oil, gas, minerals, ports, pipelines, the full malarkey, you know, a massive, massive investment fund.

And basically, the profits would be divided half Ukraine, half the United States.

But Ukraine would start that process with a massive overdraft, one side owing the Americans for all the military and financial aid given since February 2022.

That is now gone, according to this latest draft.

Instead, it's saying any contribution the Americans make in future to Ukraine, that will count as part of an American investment into it and therefore would have to be paid for by the Ukrainians or anything that comes from this deal.

So that is, if that is how it ends up, that is quite a gain, quite a win for Zelensky's negotiating team.

And Katrina, what's the theories in Washington about why that's happened?

Both that there's a deal that seems slightly more advantageous to the Ukrainians than the original version.

And also the fact that we're on the verge of the deal being signed when two months ago the whole thing was kiboshed because of the dramatic scenes in the Oval Office.

Well, it was described to me by a close advisor of President Trump, Sebastian Gorka, who's a member of the National Security Council in the White House on President Trump's team.

He said that everything changed last week when President Putin, you know, had had that ceasefire over Russia, although that's disputed by the Ukrainians.

And then there were several very serious attacks launched.

And that's when we saw as well a change in language from President Trump in the last few days, that kind of warming and softening towards Russia that we had seen, that he's sharpened that up again.

And he's just kind of come to this realization that President Putin maybe has been playing him a little bit as they see it.

And you know, the word being used is watershed.

But they also are trying to soften their language on Ukraine and harshen it on Russia and get back to what would be a more traditional US foreign policy position.

And James, that's interesting because with Trump, you can't just take one thing as the proof of a new direction.

There has to be a few things to prove that there's a new direction.

And I would argue that the posts on Truth Social we saw in the last week or so where

Trump sort of came close to condemning Putin, in fact, did condemn Putin for his attacks on civilian areas in Ukraine.

Can we add this apparent closeness to a minerals deal as a second thing?

Maybe there's a change of direction happening here.

This is this is I mean, I think the minerals deal has always been a slightly different track to the ceasefire negotiations.

So there is a sort of gap between the two.

I think and this is pure speculation because none of us know what's going on in Donald

But it strikes me that Donald Trump hasn't got many wins.

He had an initial ceasefire, but that's now collapsed.

He had some hostages released, but not all.

And I think that if he did a deal that he could assign a framework deal with the Ukrainians and then he can go to the American people say, you know what, I've got a deal with the

They're going to be paying us, paying us back for the military aid we're giving them.

And most people, I imagine, will not be on top of all the minutiae of the details.

So it's possible that could be one bit of motivation that actually has changed minds in the White House.

You know, we were never going to get the full cash payback for the whole team Biden gave.

But going forward, it gives us something to talk about.

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Are the US and Ukraine about to sign a minerals deal? | BBC Newscast

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