The US president said that Ukraine could “negotiate” to prevent war.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump said that elections should be held in Ukraine, as incumbent President Volodymyr Zelenskyy allegedly has a low rating, and that Russia allegedly wants the war to end.
“Now we have a situation in Ukraine where there have been no elections for a long time. Martial law has been introduced there. And the Ukrainian leader now, no matter how sad I am to say it, has 4% support,” Trump said at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago following the US-Russia talks in Riyadh on February 18.
According to him, it is not Russia that is demanding elections in Ukraine, but an “objective situation” because there have been no elections for a long time.
It is not yet clear where Trump got these sociological data from.
The US president also says that Russia is desperate to “stop” the war.
Zelenskyy has rebuffed US’s initial attempt to take control of minerals as downpayment for its aid in war with Russia
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has rebuffed an initial attempt by the US to corner his country’s critical minerals as a downpayment for continued military and economic aid for its war with Russia.
Three sources told the Reuters news agency that the US had proposed taking ownership of 50% of Ukraine’s critical minerals. Zelenskyy did not dismiss the offer out of hand, but said it did not yet contain the security provisions Kyiv needed.
Critical minerals are the metals and other raw materials needed for the production of hi-tech products, particularly those associated with the green energy transition, but also consumer electronics, artificial intelligence infrastructure and weapons.
The rush to tackle climate breakdown and move away from fossil fuels has triggered a rush for energy transition minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel, which are useful for electrification of transport and the construction of wind turbines. The same minerals and others are also used for the manufacture of mobile phones, AI datacentres and arms such as F-35 fighter aircraft, placing them in high demand.
As the world’s economy and technology transforms, the value of critical minerals has soared and geopolitical competition for access to them is rising. In 2023, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that the market for energy transition minerals had reached £320bn in 2022, double its value five years earlier. And if countries fully implement their clean energy and climate pledges, demand is expected to more than double by 2030 and triple by 2040, the agency says.
The term critical minerals is not a scientific term so much as a political term, and different countries have different lists of critical minerals depending on their domestic and geopolitical objectives.
In 2022, the US Geological Survey (USGS) published a list of 50 minerals, from aluminium to zirconium, that it regarded as “play[ing] a significant role in our national security, economy, renewable energy development and infrastructure”. Notable inclusions were arsenic, for semiconductors; beryllium, used as an alloying agent in aerospace and defence industries; cobalt, lithium and graphite, crucial for manufacturing batteries; indium, which makes screens respond to a finger touch; and tellurium, which is used for solar power generation.
The US’s Energy Act stipulates that the list must be updated every three years, which means this year it will be up for review, and it will be interesting to see which minerals appear or disappear given the new political environment in the country.
Rare earth elements (REEs) are a subset of 17 critical minerals that are variously indispensable for mobile phones, electric vehicles, missile guidance systems and other electronics, industrial and energy applications.
Despite their name, most of the rare earth elements are not particularly rare, but their extraction and refining is fiendishly difficult – and environmentally highly destructive – meaning production is concentrated in very few places, mainly China.
REEs include europium, used in nuclear power station control rods; dysprosium, gandolinium and praseodymium, used in the magnets in your mobile phone; and gadolinium, holmium and ytterbium, used in lasers among other things.
A 2022 article by the chair of Ukraine’s Association of Geologists, Hanna Liventseva, claimed her country contained about 5% of the world’s mineral resources, despite covering only 0.4% of the globe’s surface, thanks to a complex geology that takes in all three of the main components of the earth’s crust.
According to Ukraine’s own data, cited by Reuters, the country has deposits of 22 of the 34 minerals identified as critical by the EU, including rare earths such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, erbium and yttrium.
Before the outbreak of war with Russia, Ukraine was a key supplier of titanium, producing about 7% of global output in 2019, according to European Commission research. It also claimed 500,000 tons of lithium reserves, and one-fifth of the world’s graphite, a crucial component of nuclear power stations.
However, with Russia controlling about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, much of these reserves have been lost. According to estimates by Ukrainian thinktanks cited by Reuters, up to 40% of Ukraine’s metal resources are under occupation. Russian troops also occupy at least two of Ukraine’s lithium deposits, one in Donetsk and another in Zaporizhzhia.
There is one big reason Trump is so keen to get his hands on Ukraine’s critical minerals: China. More than ever, the Asian superpower is the world’s factory and that means, wherever in the world critical minerals are torn from the ground, it remains a crucial staging point on the supply chain.
Most of the world’s processing capacity for critical minerals is in China. According to the IEA, China’s share of refining is about 35% for nickel, 50-70% for lithium and cobalt, and nearly 90% for REEs. Its dominance in the latter, especially, is overwhelming. According to USGS data, in 2024 China accounted for almost half the world’s REE reserves.
With Trump effectively instigating a trade war with China with his imposition of steep tariffs on Chinese goods, US access to critical minerals is potentially under threat. As mentioned earlier, the world is being gripped by an unseemly scramble for mineral wealth. They are the building blocks of the economy of the future, and if the US doesn’t get its hands on them, someone else will.
Saudi Arabia has supported the idea of holding a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on its territory and reaffirmed its ongoing efforts to achieve a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine, the press service of the Saudi Foreign Ministry reported.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia highly appreciates the telephone conversation held between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 12, as well as the announcement of the possibility of holding a summit between their esteemed two presidents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the statement said.
The ministry added that the Kingdom welcomes the summit in Saudi Arabia and reaffirms its ongoing efforts to achieve a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine.
It is noted that on March 3, 2022, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the KSA Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, during telephone conversations with Putin and Zelensky, “expressed the Kingdom’s readiness to provide its mediation services to achieve a political settlement of the crisis.”
“Over the past three years, the Kingdom has continued these efforts, in particular by organizing numerous meetings on this issue,” the Foreign Ministry added.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are likely to meet for the first time in Saudi Arabia, Trump said on Wednesday in the Oval Office in front of the media.
“Trump and Putin will meet, probably meet for the first time in Saudi Arabia, he told us in the Oval Office,” a CBS News correspondent at the White House said on social media site X.
Earlier it was reported that Trump had a conversation with Putin on Wednesday and almost immediately afterwards Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Source: https://x.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1889779512574964057
US President Donald Trump has confirmed that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will arrive in Ukraine.
“I am sending Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukraine to meet with President Zelensky. This war must and will end soon – too much death and destruction,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Earlier, Bloomberg reported that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent intends to visit Ukraine this week as part of initial talks to secure U.S. access to critical minerals. Bessent may become the first member of US President Donald Trump’s team to visit Ukraine.
Earlier, the president said that his administration wants to conclude an agreement with Ukraine on access to resources in exchange for help in its defense against Russian invasion.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv earlier on Monday that he plans to meet with people from the Trump administration in Ukraine before the Munich Security Conference.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview aboard Air Force One that he wants to strike a $500 million deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on access to rare earth minerals and natural gas in Ukraine in exchange for security guarantees in any potential peace settlement, The New York Post reported Saturday.
According to the publication, also present on the plane was national security adviser Mike Waltz, addressing whom Trump said: “Let’s keep these meetings going. They want to meet. People are being killed every day. Young beautiful soldiers are being killed. Young men like my sons. On both sides. All over the battlefield.”
It is noted that Vice President Vance will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference next week.
Trump said he spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin in an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
“I’d rather not talk,” Trump said when asked how many times the two leaders had spoken. But he believes Putin “cares” about killing on the battlefield.
