US President Donald Trump has confirmed he will receive his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington on Friday, as negotiations are underway on a deal to give the United States access to Ukrainian mineral resources.
“President Zelensky is going to be coming on Friday, that is now confirmed,” Trump said Wednesday at his first cabinet meeting.
Discussions surrounding the deal that would grant the United States preferential access to Ukrainian natural resources in exchange for US support were fraught.
Officials late on Tuesday said they had come to an agreement following protracted negotiations but Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv that more difficult work lay ahead.
“This is a start, this is a framework agreement,” he told journalists at the presidential administration.
Further discussions between US and Ukrainian officials would determine the nature of security guarantees for Ukraine and the exact sums of money at stake in the accords.
“This deal could be a great success or simply disappear. Whether it is a big success, I think, depends on our conversation with president Trump. We’ll draw conclusions after,” he said.
Zelensky’s refusal to sign a first draft of the accord delivered to him in Kyiv by the US treasury secretary was met with anger by Trump, who called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator” afterwards.
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