Experts say proposed deal with U.S. makes no sense
“If you want critical minerals, Ukraine ain’t the place to look for them,” declares Jack Lifton, executive chairman of the Critical Minerals Institute. “It’s a fantasy. There’s no point to any of this. There’s some other agenda going on here. I can’t believe that anybody in Washington actually believes that it makes sense to get rare earths in Ukraine.”
If that is true, why didn’t Zelenskyy just sign it? Honestly asking.
I think it’s a trap. Zelenskiy knows that the rare earths are difficult to mine profitably. If he had signed it, it would just give Trump cover to claim that Ukraine was not holding up its end of the deal in a few years, and withdraw from whatever agreement was made.
Zelenskiy knows it’s only a matter of time before US support for Ukraine goes away. His job is to push whatever levers he has to keep the support flowing for as long as possible, while arranging more support from Europe.
I could see the whole thing being about withdrawing support from Ukraine because the “deal” fell through. Maybe it was always a means to get to where we are now, with the US no longer supplying information and weapons to Ukraine.
Zelensky was going to sign something, until baby Vance decided to throw a tantrum, and Trump couldn’t resist joining in. I don’t think it was going to be for Trump’s $500 billion amount, but that photo op was supposed to precede a signing.
In any case, odds are that Trump never intended the demand to be met.
Because he was stupid enough to believe that he could get more and that he could convince Trump to escalate the war and involve NATO directly