On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet with President Donald Trump for the first time since he re-entered the White House to sign what could be a key minerals deal to help end the war.
Fox News reported that while some details of the agreement have emerged since the meeting was announced this week, the exact terms remain unclear, and European leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, are waiting to see what could come out of this agreement, particularly when it comes to security demands.
Trump on Wednesday told reporters that Zelenskyy could “forget about” any ambitions to join NATO, but the Ukrainian president also said that day that he needs security guarantees, otherwise “we won’t have a ceasefire, nothing will work, nothing.”
“I want to find a NATO path or something similar,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian leadership has long sought NATO membership, and in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit the alliance agreed Ukraine would eventually become a member of NATO, a defense partnership Zelenskyy has since argued is the best defense against a future Russian invasion.
Trump told reporters that by entering into a minerals deal with Washington, Kyiv will be granted “automatic security” guarantees by the mere presence of American extractors on Ukrainian soil.
“Nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there,” Trump said. “We’ll be there in that way.”
it remains unclear if this “guarantee” will be enough to comfort Zelenskyy, and according to former CIA Moscow Station Chief Dan Hoffman, there are too many outstanding factors to determine whether Putin would be deterred.
Trump said on Wednesday that European allies, including the U.K. and France, will be watching U.S. negotiations with Ukraine and Russia “very closely.”
