On the campaign trail last year Donald Trump repeatedly promised that he’d end the Russo-Ukraine war on day one of his presidency. It was always a given that any peace deal struck by President Trump would be very much on Russia’s terms. But what’s developed over the last week looks qualitatively different. If not literally the same in terms of the carving up of land, these peace talks look more like the discussions leading up to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the divvying up perhaps as focused on natural resource concessions as territory. That may sound a bit dramatic. But what’s actually being discussed in the meetings in Riyadh aren’t permanent or interim borders for Ukraine or repatriation of citizens or anything that might be the actual makings even of a one sided “deal.” The main topic of conversation appears to be new concessions for American companies in the Russian oil industry, which remains heavily reliant on western technology to remain productive. A particular source of discussion was a possible series of deals for American companies to participate in Russia oil exploration in parts of the Russia-claimed arctic which are now accessible because of global warming. Indeed, oil futures are currently trending down on the expectation that more unsanctioned Russian oil will soon be coming on the market.
Meanwhile the US has pressed the Ukrainians, who are excluded from the Riyadh, with an entirely different set of demands.
As Ukraine began to grapple with the reality of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, they began talking up Ukraine’s substantial rare earth mineral wealth, seeing this as a way to speak Trump’s language. Trump might not like Ukraine. But in an escalating global economic struggle with China, which already has a substantial lead in rare earth mineral rights both at home and abroad, friendship with Ukraine could have real, transactional advantages, both economic and strategic. What Zelensky appeared to have in mind was bringing in US companies to participate in exploiting Ukraine’s mineral reserves as well providing the US with privileged access to those reserves vis a vis China and other powers.
Trump picked up this thread and took it in a rather different direction. In a proposal presented by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and discussed at a meeting with JD Vance and President Zelensky on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Ukraine was asked to hand over 50% of its rare earth mineral wealth basically for nothing.
The deal contained no security commitments from the United States — other than the possibility that US troops might protect the rare earth mineral mines in the event of a future peace deal. The exchange would not be for future US weapons aid but rather to ‘pay back’ the United States for the aid the United States already provided under Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Trump said last week that to repay the US for past aid — military and civilian — would require from Ukraine at least $500 billion in rare earth minerals, a sum dramatically higher than all the aid Ukraine has received to date. According to Ukrainian officials, the proposal, which Zelensky declined to sign, focused primarily on “repaying” the US for aid already provided and remained vague about any possible future support.
As one former senior Ukrainian official described it, aptly, to the Associated Press: “It’s a colonial agreement and Zelenskyy cannot sign it.”
Needless to say, the rare earth minerals part of this dialog is now no more than a typically Trumpian shakedown, with the US trying to force, what would have seemed like a level of colonial extraction brazen by 19th century standards, on Ukraine at its moment of maximum vulnerability. We can set aside all the pretexts and subterfuges and identify this for what it is. This isn’t a peace negotiation. Trump spewing Russian propaganda about Ukraine starting the war tells you that clearly enough. This is an attempt to reestablish and deepen economic relations between the United States and Russia, a country with a comparatively primitive economy but one rich in natural resources.
Whatever we in the US think of this new set of developments, the Ukrainians and the Europeans (mostly though not exclusively the EU) see this very much for what it is: a US administration which is not simply taking a more ‘Realist’ view of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine but one that is very clearly siding with Russia over its erstwhile European allies, with Ukraine simply the fulcrum of a pivot focused on the continent more generally. Trump officials have already begun putting out word that Trump is considering withdrawing trip-wire level troop deployments in Baltic NATO member states. The suggestion that that is possible is a positive act in itself, whatever happens with the troops themselves. And this comes in concert with JD Vance’s speech in which he explicitly charged that Russia is less a threat to Europe than their own internal cultural degradation. They’re getting the message very clearly. So for the moment the free states of Europe will have to hold up the flag against authoritarian degeneracy since the American federal government is attempting to make common cause with the tyrant states of Eurasia.