WASHINGTON — President Trump suggested Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may pay a visit to the White House later this week to sign off on an economic agreement that would allow the US to reap benefits of Ukraine’s supply of rare earth minerals.
“I hear that he’s coming on Friday,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Certainly it’s OK with me if he’d like to.”
The Post could not immediately confirm whether a visit between the two leaders had been scheduled.
Earlier Tuesday, multiple outlets reported that Washington and Kyiv had agreed to a revised deal after the US dropped its demand to receive all the proceeds from Ukraine’s exploitation of rare earths, estimated to be worth up to $500 billion.
Ukraine’s public broadcaster, Suspilne, reported that the reworked deal calls for the US to receive 50% of Ukraine’s resource-related revenue.
The Financial Times, the first English-language outlet to report on the tentative agreement, said that the document does not contain specific security guarantees from the US.
The outlet also reported that the framework calls for the US and Ukraine to jointly developing the eastern European country’s resources.
“The minerals agreement is only part of the picture. We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and Kyiv’s lead negotiator, told the Financial Times.
Trump sees the deal as a way to make up for billions in American taxpayer money that has been spent on supporting Ukraine aginst the three-year-old Russian invasion.
“We want to get that money back,” Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon.
“We’re helping the country [with] a very, very big problem, a problem like very few people have had. Shouldn’t have had this problem, because it shouldn’t have happened, but it did happen, so we have to straighten it out, but the American taxpayer now is going to get their money back.”
The initial US rare earth proposal was presented by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this month after then-candidate Trump and Zelensky had discussed the matter during a September meeting at Trump Tower.
Zelensky rejected the initial offer, to the frustration of the Trump administration, but the White House worked with Ukrainian officials to get a revised deal back on the table.
Trump last met Zelensky in person in Paris this past December, a trilateral sitdown with French President Emmanuel Macron to mark the reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral.
As Trump’s team held conversations with Russian officials about re-establishing relations, the president accused Zelensky last week of being a “dictator” for not holding elections during war time.
Zelensky said Sunday he would be ready to step down from office if it meant getting Ukraine NATO membership — something the Trump administration has said is “unrealistic.”
This is a developing story. Check back for more information.
