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US national security adviser Mike Waltz has said Ukraine will sign a critical minerals deal with Washington in “the very short term”, even as Kyiv says several key points must still be agreed.
“Under [Donald] Trump, this war will end and it will end soon,” Waltz told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland on Friday. “He is the president of peace.”
Trump called Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week in an opening attempt to end the conflict. He then dispatched senior US officials to meet the Kremlin’s representatives in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday but Zelenskyy was not invited.
Trump, who this week falsely claimed Zelenskyy had started the war, raised the stakes further on Friday by saying Ukraine’s leader did not need to be involved in negotiations to bring it to an end. He also labelled Zelenskyy a “dictator” in a social media post.
“I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings, to be honest with you,” Trump said. “When Zelenskyy said, oh, he wasn’t invited to a meeting, I mean, it wasn’t a priority because he did such a bad job in negotiating so far.”
Ukraine has asked for security guarantees from the US, as well as Europe, to ensure that any peace deal is lasting and just, and will deter Russia from using an armistice to rest and re-arm, allowing it to resume its invasion.
Waltz said Zelenskyy wanted to develop critical minerals with US investment and claimed Ukraine’s leader would agree to a deal with Washington, although he did not provide details of the terms.
Zelenskyy last week rejected a proposal presented by US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent during a visit to Kyiv, saying it was not in Ukraine’s best interest as written.
The deal proposed the US would take ownership of about 50 per cent of the rights to Ukraine’s rare earth and critical minerals in exchange for past military assistance, and did not contain any offers of future assistance.
Senior Ukrainian officials who viewed the proposal told the Financial Times that Bessent demanded Zelenskyy sign the deal in his presence.
The officials said they had spent the past week drawing up a counterproposal, which they discussed with the US special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, in Kyiv on Thursday and Friday.
Zelenskyy said in a midnight address on Friday that “today, Ukrainian and US teams are working on a draft agreement between our governments. This agreement can add value to our relations — what matters most is getting the details right to ensure it truly works.”
A senior Ukrainian official said: “We’ve never said that we don’t want to sign [the deal]. They don’t understand that the draft text can’t violate our constitution and, actually, we are helping Trump to make a real deal.”
The official added Kyiv was trying to negotiate a “strong deal which doesn’t violate our laws and constitution and which guarantees the investments and security”.
Officials with knowledge of the negotiations said the US had presented an improved proposal but the two sides were working on several points.
Zelenskyy’s rejection of the original US deal and the subsequent war of words between him and Trump over the past week has raised concerns about the strategic partnership between the two nations and future American assistance, upon which Ukraine greatly relies to fend off Russia’s attacks.
“We want to be productive with the Americans, it’s not our choice to argue,” the Ukrainian official said.
Waltz on Friday told his audience of conservatives outside Washington that the US had “an obligation” to the American taxpayer “to recoup the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been invested in this war”, drawing applause from the crowd.
He added Europe was “often” paid back for its contributions to Ukraine, so the US should be too.
“Here’s the bottom line, President Zelenskyy is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term,” Waltz said. “And that is good for Ukraine. What better could you have for Ukraine than to be in an economic partnership with the United States? . . . What better could you have for Ukraine to stop the killing?”
Waltz also portrayed Trump as a peacemaker. “He’s going to end the war in Europe. He is going to end the wars in the Middle East. He is going to reinvest the United States and our leadership in our own hemisphere, from the Arctic to the border to Panama,” he said.
“By the end of this all, we’re going to have the Nobel Peace Prize sitting next to the name of Donald J Trump,” he added.
Cartography by Steven Bernard
