This.27 Mar 2025 22:37
"Donald Trump is holding a gun to the head of Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding huge reparations payments and laying claim to half of Ukraine’s oil, gas, and hydrocarbon resources as well as almost all its metals and much of its infrastructure.
The latest version of his “minerals deal”, obtained by The Telegraph, is unprecedented in the history of modern diplomacy and state relations.
“It is an expropriation document,” said Alan Riley, an expert on energy law at the Atlantic Council. “There are no guarantees, no defence clauses, the US puts up nothing.
“The Americans can walk away, the Ukrainians can’t. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
The text leaves little doubt that Mr Trump’s chief objective is to incorporate Ukraine as a province of America’s oil, gas and resource industries.
It dovetails with parallel talks between the US and Russia for a comprehensive energy partnership, including plans to restore West Siberian gas flows to Europe in large volumes, with US companies and Trump-aligned financiers gaining a major stake in the business.
The revived gas trade would flow through Ukraine’s network, and later via the Baltic as the sabotaged Nord Stream pipelines are brought back on stream.
The new draft states that the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund will control Ukraine’s “critical minerals or other minerals, oil, natural gas (including liquified [sic] natural gas), fuels or other hydrocarbons and other extractable materials”.
All critical materials listed in the US Energy Act are covered, including both rare earths and 50 other minerals such as lithium, titanium, cobalt, aluminium and zinc.
The US will control infrastructure linked to natural resources “including, but not limited to, roads, rail, pipelines and other transportation assets; ports, terminals and other logistics facilities and refineries, processing facilities, natural gas liquefaction and/or regasification facilities and similar assets”.
Three of the five board members on the new fund will be chosen by the US. It will have “A” shares and golden shares. America will receive all the royalties until Ukraine has paid off at least $100bn of war debt to the US, with 4pc interest added – less than the $350bn floated earlier by Mr Trump but still half of Ukraine’s GDP, and unpayable.
Ukraine has only “B’ shares and will receive 50pc of the royalties only once its arrears are paid off.
The fund is registered in Delaware but under New York jurisdiction. The US has the first right of refusal on all projects. It has authority to examine the books and accounts of any Ukrainian ministry or agency whenever it wants during working hours."