President Donald Trump says the United States will not give Ukraine significant security guarantees as he confirmed that the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would visit Washington, DC to sign a critical minerals deal on Friday.
“I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much,” Trump said on Wednesday. “We’re going to have Europe do that.”
Zelenskyy had earlier said that a “preliminary” economic agreement between Ukraine and the US was ready but noted that the deal did not yet include any US security guarantees that Kyiv views as vital to ending the war with Russia.
A full agreement could hinge on the outcome of talks with Trump later this week in Washington, Zelenskyy told a news conference in Kyiv.
“This deal could be a great success or it could pass quietly. And the big success depends on our conversation with President Trump,” he said.
According to media reports, the agreement will grant the US access to critical minerals in Ukraine in compensation for US assistance in repelling Russia’s full-scale invasion that began in February 2022.
The White House has applied heavy pressure on Kyiv to allow the US access to its vast reserves of minerals that are used in the aerospace, defence and nuclear industries.
The deal is central to Ukrainian attempts to ensure strong support from Trump as he seeks a quick end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president told reporters in Kyiv that the framework economic deal with the US is a first step towards a full agreement that would be subject to ratification by Ukraine’s parliament.
The planned visit comes after a dramatic week in which the two leaders exchanged hostile remarks, with Trump calling Zelenskyy a “dictator”.
Trump has cast the deal as a repayment for billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv during the war.
He announced Zelenskyy’s visit on Wednesday at the start of the first US Cabinet meeting of his second term, hailing the deal as “a very big agreement”.
“The previous administration put us in a very bad position, but we’ve been able to make a deal where we’re going to get the money back and a lot of money in the future,” Trump said.
He also ruled out the prospect of Ukraine joining the NATO military alliance.
“NATO – you can forget about,” Trump said. “I think that’s probably the reason the whole thing started.”
Reporting earlier from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford said it appeared that Zelenskyy “still has questions” over the future US-Ukraine relationship.
“Ukraine’s hope is that if the US has major assets in the country, then it will be more forthcoming with giving it support. But Zelenskyy still has questions as to whether that support will be, for example, buying weapons from the US,” he said.
While discussions have been taking place on the minerals deal, the Kremlin has also sought to woo Trump by lavishing praise on the US leader and by encouraging American investments in natural resources in Ukrainian territory controlled by Russian forces.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said US and Russian officials would meet in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss bilateral disputes that are part of a wider dialogue the sides see as crucial to ending the Ukraine war.
Drone attack
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched at least 177 drones of various types targeting regions across the country. The Ukrinform news agency said that its journalist Tetiana Kulyk was among those killed in the attack.
“Her untimely death has shocked her colleagues and is a huge loss for the agency,” Ukrinform said in a statement.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said one of its facilities had been damaged in the Dnipropetrovsk region, without elaborating.
On the front line in eastern Ukraine, Ukraine’s forces said that it launched a successful counterattack in the Donetsk region, gaining control over the village of Kotlyne near a key transit artery and the logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
Russian forces have also been clawing their way towards the town of Kostyantynivka and intensively bombarding the civilian hub in the eastern Donetsk region.
Regional authorities said five people were killed and 11 were wounded in the latest Russian strikes that attest to the difficult fighting for Ukrainian forces that are facing down a better-resourced and large Russian army across the sprawling front line.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said that its forces had gained control over two more villages in the Kursk region in Russia where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive in August last year.