Stefanchuk said work has begun on a mineral agreement with the U.S

On Monday, the Ukrainian government will start working on concluding a mineral and security guarantee agreement with the administration of US President Donald Trump. This was announced by the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Ruslan Stefanchuk, NHK reported.

Stefanchuk stressed that Ukraine is ready to work with partners on the agreement on minerals, but wants specific security guarantees.

Stefanchuk recalled that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered the United States to jointly develop Ukrainian minerals as part of his "victory plan" last September.

Meanwhile, as NV reported citing people working on the agreement, the new version of the fossil document, which Washington insists on, is "even tougher than the first version". The publication's sources say the US is proposing a fund to manage the resources, but with full American control. According to their proposal:

• Ukraine contributes two-thirds of the funds to the fund, but not with real money, but with future revenues from extraction;
• The size of the fund is proposed by the US side to be set at the level of 500bn dollars;
• The agreement covers not only minerals, but also gas and oil;
• The agreement is purely commercial and does not provide any security guarantees for Ukraine.

Journalists write that Zelensky's aides are allegedly urging him to sign the agreement to avoid further conflicts with Trump, who is serious and has already started threatening Ukraine with "problems" in case of refusal.

Earlier, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently visited Kiev to present a draft agreement with Ukraine on rare earth metals. However, the agreement made no mention of security guarantees for Ukraine, only that the US wanted control over 50 per cent of certain resources. Therefore, it was not signed. Later, the administration of US President Donald Trump handed Ukraine an improved version of the rare earth metals agreement.

Rare earth metals are indispensable in the production of many modern devices, in particular smartphones or electric cars, as well as other high-tech products. According to a report published on the website of the NATO Energy Security Centre, Ukraine has the potential to become a potential key supplier of rare metals such as titanium, lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium, zirconium, graphite, apatite, fluorite and nickel.