The U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Minerals Partnership in the Wake of Russia’s War of Aggression

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered not only military and diplomatic responses but also a new mercantile mechanism for cooperation, co-investments, and burden sharing for natural resource exploration and extraction as part of a country's defense and development policy.The "minerals deal" (involving mining, hydrocarbons, and infrastructure) between Ukraine and the United States establishes a mechanism for joint investment for Ukraine's reconstruction, assuming that a durable peace with Russia is reached.The details of the deal are contained in a Limited Partnership Agreement (LP Agreement) that the parties have not disclosed.However, one can assess the outlines of the deal through the Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of the United States of America on the Establishment of a United States-Ukraine Reconstruction and Investment Fund (UURIF), 1 public announcements, and an early leaked draft of the LP Agreement. 2 This essay explores what is known of the deal, including what we have learned from interviews, together with an analysis of its implications for Ukraine, the United States, and international law and international relations.The deal has helped to shift the paradigm of U.S. relations with Ukraine under the Trump administration, and it reflects a new "transactional" approach to U.S. assistance where the United States openly extracts access to resources in exchange for aid, military support, and financing.At the same time, it reveals transparency concerns with this approach, as neither the United States nor Ukraine plan to make public the key LP Agreement between their respective government agencies.THE "MINERALS DEAL" On April 30, 2025, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott K.H. Bessent and Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko