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On the morning of Pope Francis’s April 26 funeral, U.S. President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, sat alone on two red chairs, facing one another, in the largely empty St. Peter’s Basilica. At the time, the topic of the impromptu mini-summit amid the baroque opulence of the Vatican was not known.
Less than a week later, all became clear. The two leaders were wrapping up the fraught Ukraine-U.S. minerals deal, discussions of which had sometimes been ill-tempered and explosive since Mr. Trump’s election campaign in the fall. On Thursday, in his evening address from Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky said, “In fact, now we have the first result of the Vatican meeting, which makes it truly historic.”
The deal was done – finally. It had been signed the day before in Washington by U.S. Secretary of State Scott Bessent and Ukraine’s Minister of Economy, Yulia Svyrydenko. The agreement will see the two countries create a jointly managed fund to exploit Ukraine’s natural resources. Ukraine’s contribution will be 50 per cent of future revenues generated by income on new extraction licences for various resources.
For the rest of this column: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-donald-trumps-ukraine-minerals-deals-looks-to-be-more-about-oil-and/