That’s all from the Europe live blog today, here’s a summary of the latest developments:
The US and Kyiv have signed an agreement to share revenues from the future sale of Ukrainian minerals and rare earths. Donald Trump has said such an agreement will provide an economic incentive for the US to continue to invest in Ukraine’s defence and its reconstruction after he brokers a peace deal with Russia.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said on national television that the agreement, which must be ratified by Ukraine’s parliament, was “good, equal and beneficial”. In a post on social media he said the two countries would establish a Reconstruction Investment Fund with each side having 50% voting rights.
Ukraine would not be asked to pay back any “debt” for the billions of dollars in US weapons and other support since Russia invaded in February 2022 – a key demand for Kyiv – Shmyhal said. He also said the fund would not be an obstacle to Ukraine’s EU accession talks.
Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko, who was in Washington to sign the fund, gave further details including confirming that Ukraine would retain full ownership of resources “on our territory and in territorial waters belong to Ukraine.” There would be no changes to ownership of state-owned companies, she said and income would come from new licences for critical materials and oil and gas projects, not from projects which had already begun.
US treasury department secretary Scott Bessent said the “historic” deal “signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term.” He added, “To be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”
It was unclear up until the last moment whether the US and Ukraine would manage to sign the deal. Washington reportedly pressured Ukraine to sign additional agreements, including on the structure of the investment fund, or to “go back home”. Bessent later said the US was ready to sign though Ukraine had made some last-minute changes.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio, who had threatened to step back from his mediation efforts between Russia and Ukraine over the past week, has called the minerals deal a “milestone in our shared prosperity and an important step in ending this war”. In a post on X he wrote:
Thanks to @POTUS’s leadership, today the U.S. and Ukraine signed the Reconstruction Investment Fund Agreement—a milestone in our shared prosperity and an important step in ending this war.
