How Ukraine Pitched Trump on a Deal for Critical Minerals

To Ukraine, they are a chit to play in an ongoing appeal to President Trump for more financial and military support. To Mr. Trump, they should be overdue payment for billions of dollars committed to Kyiv’s war effort.

Either way, Ukraine’s vast and valuable mineral resources have suddenly become a prominent component in the maneuvering over the country’s future.

Over the past week, Mr. Trump has repeatedly pushed the idea of trading U.S. aid for Ukraine’s critical minerals. He told Fox News on Monday that he wanted “the equivalent of like $500 billion worth of rare earths,” a group of minerals crucial for many high-tech products, in exchange for American aid. Ukraine had “essentially agreed to do that,” he said.

For Ukraine, it is a hopeful sign that Mr. Trump, a longtime skeptic of American aid to Kyiv, might find a path to maintaining support that he finds palatable. But it’s still possible that the famously mercurial president will change his mind, and even his statements about a deal have been ambiguous about whether he wants Ukraine’s minerals for past or future aid — or a combination of both.

Mr. Trump’s proposal followed a campaign launched by Kyiv in the fall to appeal to the U.S. president’s business-oriented mind-set by discussing lucrative energy deals and emphasizing that defending Ukraine aligned with American economic interests.

The campaign included a meeting between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky and trips to the United States by Ukrainian officials to pitch deals for exploiting deposits of lithium and titanium — vital for producing technologies like electric batteries. It also involved getting backing from influential political figures like the Republican senator Lindsey Graham.

The campaign was launched after politically connected U.S. investors started showing interest in Ukraine’s underground wealth in late 2023, despite the war that has been raging since 2022. A consortium including TechMet, an energy investment firm partly owned by the U.S. government, and Ronald S. Lauder, a wealthy friend of Mr. Trump, has engaged with Kyiv to bid on a Ukrainian lithium field, according to a letter to Mr. Zelensky reviewed by The New York Times.

Mr. Lauder, a cosmetics heir who planted the idea in Mr. Trump’s mind of buying resource-rich Greenland, said through a spokesman that he had not discussed Ukrainian minerals with Mr. Trump directly, but had “raised the issue with stakeholders in the U.S. and Ukraine for many years up to the present day.”

As Mr. Trump pushes for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Kyiv’s campaign around critical minerals has underscored Mr. Zelensky’s evolving strategy for retaining American support. Moving away from the moral appeals he used with the Biden administration, he has embraced a more transactional approach closer to Mr. Trump’s style. Mr. Zelensky recently said that he would also be interested in purchasing American liquefied natural gas.

Speaking to Reuters on Friday, Mr. Zelensky said: “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal.”

Mr. Trump said Tuesday that he was sending his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, to meet Mr. Zelensky in Ukraine — the first visit by a Trump administration official.

Mr. Bessent was directed to explore with the Ukrainians what a deal for the minerals might look like. He was expected in Kyiv on Wednesday, according to an official with knowledge of the trip.

The idea of leveraging Ukraine’s mineral resources took shape last summer. Kyiv was crafting its “Victory Plan,” a strategy aimed at ending the war on terms favorable to Ukraine, and wanted to convince its allies to sustain their support despite rising war fatigue.

Ukrainian officials were particularly concerned about a potential return to power of Mr. Trump, who had vowed to cut off military and financial aid to Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials and lawmakers.

Their attention was drawn to an argument voiced by a Trump ally: Mr. Graham, who was making the case that Ukraine was “sitting on a gold mine” of critical minerals. “If we help Ukraine now, they could become the best business partner we’ve ever dreamed of,” he said last June. He reinforced his message in a video with Mr. Zelensky in September.

Ukrainian authorities say the country holds deposits of nearly half the 50 minerals the United States has identified as critical for its economy and national security. The Kyiv School of Economics says Ukraine holds the largest titanium reserves in Europe and a third of the continent’s lithium reserves.

Groups like SecDev, a Canadian firm, have valued the reserves at several trillion dollars. But some deposits are inaccessible because they are in Russian-occupied land. And experts caution that exploiting mineral reserves could be a costly and prolonged process, with new surveys needed to accurately assess their potential.

In a November 2023 letter to Mr. Zelensky, Brian Menell, head of TechMet, sought assistance for launching a bid to exploit a state-owned lithium field in central Ukraine. The letter named Mr. Lauder, the Texas-based investment firm Privateer Capital and other U.S. and international investors as associates.

Mr. Menell and other energy executives met Mr. Zelensky in New York in September. It is unclear whether they discussed the bid, which has yet to be launched. “TechMet, together with our partners, is available to move forward with further work if the U.S. and Ukrainian governments instruct us to do so,” Mr. Menell said in a statement.

Kyiv then decided to offer allies access to critical minerals as part of its Victory Plan. Mr. Zelensky presented the plan to Mr. Trump during a meeting in New York in late September.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, when Kremlin-backed troops were already waging war in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv won support from him, including for weapons supplies, by buying coal from an important swing state, Pennsylvania.

Part of Ukraine’s argument now is to emphasize that should it lose the war, its mineral resources would fall into the hands of Russia and its allies like China, which already dominates the global market for such materials.

John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and now senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, said Ukraine’s pitch was an obvious sell for Mr. Trump.

“It involves vast energy resources, economically valuable assets which are not abundant in the Western world, and it’s a way to strip other competitors, including China, of their leverage over the United States,” Mr. Herbst said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Last fall, work was underway to finalize and sign an agreement with the Biden administration to cooperate on extracting and processing minerals. But Ukrainian authorities decided to postpone the signing of the deal and offer it to Mr. Trump instead so that he could claim credit for it.

A Ukrainian delegation led by Yulia Svyrydenko, the economy minister, then traveled to New York and Washington in December for meetings with U.S. officials and business representatives, with critical minerals as a central topic.

Ms. Svyrydenko outlined potential energy deals, including the acquisition of production licenses for critical minerals. A presentation, seen by The Times, emphasized that Ukraine was “capable of building the entire value chain to meet U.S. and E.U. metallic titanium demand for 25 years.”

Matthew Murray, chairman of the advisory board of Velta, a Ukrainian titanium extraction company, said Ms. Svyrydenko had asked him and other U.S. business representatives for their help in making Ukraine’s case to the Trump administration.

“We spent a good deal of this meeting talking about critical raw materials,” Mr. Murray said. He added that the exploitation of these resources could become a new pillar of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

What shape this pillar may take remains to be seen.

A draft of the agreement that Kyiv postponed, and which was reviewed by The Times, included only pledges to share information and expertise on potential partnerships. It contained no financial commitments and was nonbinding. It is unclear whether Kyiv and Washington will amend the agreement to align it with Mr. Trump’s latest proposals.

Mr. Murray, a former Obama administration official, said one idea circulating in Washington was to offer Ukraine a loan to purchase U.S. weaponry, with access to critical minerals as collateral. This proposal could align with Mr. Trump’s vision, who has talked of obtaining a “guarantee” for continued American assistance.

“There are many steps yet to be taken, but the concept is very viable,” he said.

Marian Prysiazhniuk contributed reporting.