Trump Wants To Dominate 500 Billion Dollar Minerals, President Zelenskiy: Ukraine Is Not Sold!

JAKARTA - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected US demands that seek to control USD 500 billion worth of mineral wealth from Ukraine to pay back wartime aid to Washington.

Ukraine said the United States had not provided supplies that were close to the number and did not offer special security guarantees in the agreement.

Ukrainian leaders who were under heavy pressure from the White House in Trump's time said Washington had supplied weapons to its country worth $67 billion and direct budget support of $31.5 billion over nearly three years of war with Russia.

"You can't call this 500 billion and ask us to return 500 billion minerals or something else. This is not a serious conversation," Zelenskiy said.

Trump said he wanted rare earth minerals worth $500 billion from Kyiv to get Washington and his team last week proposing a deal Kyiv refused to sign in its current form.

Zelenskiy said the proposed deal did not contain the security provisions Ukraine desperately needed to protect it from Russian aggression. He said the draft deal proposed the US take over possession of 50% of Ukraine's important minerals.

"I'm defending Ukraine, I can't sell our country. I said okay, give us some kind of positive thing. You write a kind of guarantee, and we'll write a memorandum ... a kind of percentage," he said.

"I was told: only 50 (percent). I said: Okay, no. Let the lawyers work even more, they don't do all the necessary work. I'm just a decision maker, I'm not working on the details of this document. Let them do it, "continued the President of Ukraine.

The issue of how much aid the United States has supplied to Ukraine is diplomatically important in line with Kyiv's efforts to maintain support from its most important ally.

In a statement on Tuesday, Trump questioned where the money had gone to Ukraine.

Zelenskiy, responding to the comments, said the joint aid from the US and the European Union amounted to $200 billion out of a total of $320 billion spent on weaponry in war efforts. While Ukraine bears the remaining costs of around $120 billion.