What's behind the US-Ukrainian minerals deal?
Ukraine and the United States are set to sign a framework agreement on the joint development and export of Ukrainian mineral resources such as oil, gas, uranium, coal and rare earths. Volodymyr Zelensky, who will travel to Washington on Friday to sign the deal, has said it does not include US security guarantees. The media take a critical stance.
Cynically exploiting desperation
For the Salzburger Nachrichten, Ukraine will have no choice but to agree to a bad offer:
“It's a cynical deal. Donald Trump's entire behaviour is geared towards benefiting the US or hurting China - preferably both at once. ... For the Ukrainians, the deal is an act of desperation. They have no choice at all. Ukraine will be finished without US support. The draft does not include the security guarantees demanded by Zelensky and the deal deprives Kyiv of funds for reconstruction. All it offers is the chance to keep the Americans on side - and even that is only a hope.”
Back to colonialism
Trump sees Ukraine only as a debtor, complains Ilta-Sanomat:
“During the three years of the war the United States has been Ukraine's main supporter. But this support began to falter in Congress under President Joe Biden. Even so, however, there was no talk of repayment. For Trump, Ukraine is not a defender of Western freedom but a debtor. Trump's blackmail looks like a return to the days of colonialism. Back then, the big countries saw the small countries merely as a source of raw materials. It is also not in Finland's interest to return to that mindset.”
The best it can get for now
The agreement represents the best security guarantee available to Ukraine right now, Rzeczpospolita counters:
“It's hard to imagine that in a threatening scenario the US would give up its investments there without a fight, as such investments will cost US taxpayers many billions of dollars (because the Ukrainian mineral deposits not only need to be explored to determine their quantity and quality, but also extracted). And every future US president will defend these investments. Ukraine has no other security guarantees, and the door to Nato is likely to remain closed for years to come.”
All just hot air
In economic terms the deal is senseless, energy commodities expert Mikhail Krutikhin writes in a Telegram post republished by Echo:
“For many reasons, no one will seriously invest money in the extraction of all this selenium, praseodymium and lithium. Both Kyiv and Moscow have realised that they can do Trump a favour (expecting a favour in return) by signing this shrill score for trumpets and timpani. All of Trump's foreign policy endeavours in the first month of his presidency have gone up in smoke. ... So far his public has received nothing solid - but they're so eager to offer it something. This, and only this, is the entire content of the rare earth deal, which make no commercial sense whatsoever.”
Blackmailed into a bad peace
The minerals deal is a testament to the madness of today's powerful, author and Volkskrant columnist Tommy Wieringa concludes:
“The difference between the Marshall Plan aid of yesteryear and the plundering of raw materials today is the clearest sign of how America's character has been deformed. Ukraine is being blackmailed into a bad peace deal that lacks even the most basic security guarantees. In Riyadh, authoritarianism rules over the fate of the free world. There is nothing good about this corrupt assembly, everything is predatory and moral decay. Occasionally, I wish there was a special place in hell where this kind of people could be roasted until the end of time, preferably on a low flame, fuelled by their own oil and gas reserves.”