President Trump has said he wants access to the country’s natural resources in exchange for American aid

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has declined to sign an agreement that would give the US access to his country’s rare earth minerals, Washington Post reporter Josh Rogin and Reuters have claimed.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump made it clear that he wanted Kiev to pay for the assistance it has received from Washington with its natural resources.

According to the 2024 World Economic Forum report, Ukraine “holds immense potential as a major global supplier of critical raw materials” that could be “essential” for defense, the technology sector, and green energy. The nation boasts Europe’s largest titanium and lithium reserves, which are not classified as rare-earth elements.

Kiev also has considerable beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium, zirconium, graphite, apatite, fluorite, and nickel deposits.

In a post on X on Friday, the Washington Post’s Rogin claimed that “multiple lawmakers here in Munich told me the US Congressional delegation presented Zelensky with a piece of paper they wanted him to sign which would grant the US rights to 50% of Ukraine’s future mineral reserves. Zelensky politely declined to sign it.”

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Reuters also cited anonymous members of the Ukrainian delegation at the Munich Security Conference as saying essentially the same thing. The supposed meeting between the Ukrainian leader and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers reportedly lasted 90 minutes.

According to the agency, Zelensky “felt he was being asked unreasonably to sign something he hadn’t had a chance to read,” with two of the sources describing the proposal as “one-sided.” Kiev still needs to work out “some details,” according to the report.

On Wednesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent traveled to Kiev, where he presented the draft to the Ukrainian leader. In an interview with Reuters last week, Zelensky said he would like to have a mutually beneficial partnership with the US as opposed to simply giving Ukraine’s natural resources away.

Zelensky acknowledged however, that a large chunk of mineral-rich territories is currently under Russian control.

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According to Forbes, around $7 trillion worth of Ukraine’s total mineral wealth is located in what is now the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which joined Russia in 2022.

 Ukraine has “tremendously valuable land in terms of rare earth [and] in terms of oil and gas,” President Trump told Fox News this week.

He stated he had told the leadership in Kiev “that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion worth of rare earths, and they’ve essentially agreed to do that.”