A The historic agreement for Ukraine to give more than half of its future oil, gas and minerals in the United States could thaw a cold war in the Republican Party.
For more than a year, the Republicans have disagreed on the country torn apart by the war, with the legislators aligned by Trump skeptical about continuous participation and the national security hawks determined to counter the continuous invasion of Russia. But several Republicans of the Congress declared Thursday that the agreement gives the two factions what they need: a path to continuous support which could be sold to voters as a commercial arrangement or a moral obligation – or both.
“Yesterday was a very bad day for the dictator and the war criminal, Vladimir Putin,” said Senator Roger Wicker, Kansas Republican and president of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The door is now open for more help. This changes the game.”
The agreement, concluded Wednesday after months of negotiations, will give the United States a participation of 50% in all new oil, gas and mineral and infrastructure projects in Ukraine and will be used to finance Ukrainian purchases of American weapons systems. The terms, which must still be ratified by the Ukrainian Parliament, seem to have dissolved weeks of tension between the interior circles of President Donald Trump and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after Trump and Vice-President JD Vance degraded Zelensky in an exchange of heated oval offices.
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The United States has provided more than $ 66 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since Russia launched a large-scale invasion of the country in 2022. In recent months, Trump and the Congress Republicans fell to send more aid to the United States to the country, Concessions to Russia in exchange for a cease-fire agreement. But Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have overestimated his hand by continuing to launch fatal strikes in kyiv during the talks, in Furadant Trump and by exposing how much he has little influence with the Russian chief.
Although the agreement does not offer Ukraine, the security guarantees that it has long looked for, it actually gives Trump and its allies a tangible economic justification for the maintenance of American aid. For the long -standing participants of Ukraine in the Capitol, the agreement revives the prospect that the Congress appropriating more funds to Ukraine this year. “It puts American skin in the game,” said Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa calls the agreement a “huge breakthrough” which allows Trump “to tell the American people that the Ukrainians will reimburse us, and we can continue to provide military aid to defend something in which we are really invested.”
The US-Ukraine US investment fund will be administered by the two countries and funded by income from future energy and mineral projects, including those linked to the vast reserves of Lithium, titanium and rare land, according to a Trump administration official. Existing operations will remain fully under Ukrainian control and the property of all resources will remain with Ukraine. But in the future, Kyiv would be required to correspond to any new American military assistance with a contribution based on resources to the fund.
The Zelensky management team was due to the terms. “This is excellent news – we feel optimistic,” said a foreign policy advisor from Zelensky who was involved in negotiations. The Ukrainian negotiators were able to “eliminate all the really expensive things” proposed by the United States, says the advisor, leaving an agreement in which the costs in Ukraine “seem minimal”.
Although the agreement does not have an explicit promise, the United States will protect Ukraine against more Russian incursions, to give the United States a financial participation in the future of the country could be the next best thing. “It is probably as close as we are going to get security guarantees with this administration,” said the advisor on time.
A former Ukrainian official had a more measured reaction, noting that the agreement does not change much on the battlefield. “It is difficult to call this a security guarantee. The Americans can tell the Russians not to attack any projects with American investments. But that does not give security to the rest of the country,” said the former official.
The reaction of the Democrats has also been mixed, with a certain warning that the agreement is likely to transform American foreign policy into a payment operation. For legislators who have long supported Ukraine on the basis of shared democratic values and geopolitical interests, the transition to an explicit transactional arrangement was shocking.
“My concern is that Trump succumbs to Putin's intimidator,” said the minority chief in the Senate Chuck Schumer. “He does these developed dances, but proof of pudding will be if he resists Putin, if he defends Zelensky, when they are going to sign a real agreement.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, which recently introduced a Bipartisan bill which would impose new sanctions and prices on nations which buy Russian energy, describes the mineral agreement as “a positive stage” but “largely symbolic”. “It does not make sense in immediate practical terms,” he said time. “But that could be a springboard to Trump reaffirming our support for Ukraine in military and economic terms.”
Senator Chris Murphy, another Democrat in Connecticut, was even more critical, rejecting the agreement as useless because “Donald Trump is rooted for the destruction of Ukraine”. He pointed out that Ukraine's richer regions are found in areas that Trump officials encouraged Ukraine to abandon as part of a cease-fire.
“My feeling is that [the deal] There is probably no teeth, and this probably has to do with the mineral deposits in the territories controlled by Russia which, according to Donald Trump, will remain permanently in the hands of Russia, “Murphy told Time.
Legislators and analysts in Ukraine and America have always focused on the details of the agreement, in particular the mechanisms of the US-UK-UKRAINE Investment Fund. Even if access to minerals in the country is years of leave, the way in which the fund is structured can provide Ukraine immediate aid in its war effort, explains Mark Montgomery, a retired counter-advertising of the American Navy and a main member of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
To keep Ukraine continuing to postpone the Russian advance, the Ukrainian army needs the United States to continue providing real-time information, specialized missiles for Ukrainian fighter planes and missiles for patriotic batteries that defend Ukrainian civilians. In recent months, Trump and other Republicans threatened to cut all of this.
In the long term, if this arrangement really leads to the extraction of precious minerals, it “will integrate the United States more deeply into the future of Ukraine”, explains Montgomery. This shared interest is that the leaders of Ukraine – and the Republican hawks – have launched Trump for months, and this agreement may have established the right way of attracting his attention – with dollars and hundred.
– With report by Simon Shuster
