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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says further agreement on fund to follow
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Washington to sign a deal on rare earth minerals on Friday, Donald Trump has said.
The US president said Washington would get “a lot of money” back from Ukraine under the deal, but warned that he would be providing minimal guarantees to Ukraine for security from future Russian aggression under any peace deal.
“I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much – we’re going to have Europe do that because we’re talking about Europe is their next door neighbour,” Mr Trump told reporters.
Mr Zelensky has said that a framework economic deal with the US is ready – but security guarantees that Kyiv views as vital remain to be decided.
Earlier, Russia contradicted Mr Trump by saying it strongly opposed European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine, with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claiming it is a “deceit … aimed at fuelling the conflict”.
The peacekeeping force, proposed by French president Emmanuel Macron and endorsed by Sir Keir Starmer, is intended as a security guarantee against future Russian aggression.
In the wake of Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement that defence spending will rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2026-27 and head towards 3 per cent by 2033, leading defence analyst Francis Tusa writes:
There needs to be some careful thought about what this extra money is, what it can be used for, and what it will do as regards the shape and capabilities of the services, and UK defence as a whole.
In the immediate aftermath of the defence budget increase, there has been an online boom in people “pre-spending” the extra cash, seeing pet programmes as now being funded. If only life were that simple.
There is no defence cash-and-carry warehouse where you can load up pallets of ships, fighters, or tanks, pay for them and walk off … Even with this extra money being devoted to defence, anyone expecting to see anything dramatically different in a year’s time to what they look like today is going to be disappointed.
Eliminating the capability gaps in all of the services, the holes, and the chasms will be the work of many years, even if everything is to be done at the fastest possible speed.
President Zelensky says Ukraine will not repay any debts to the US under the wording of a deal agreed on his country’s minerals.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said his country and the US had reached a preliminary agreement on a broad economic deal that includes American access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
After days of negotiations, Ukraine and the US will sign the preliminary agreement, although further details of a full agreement – including US security guarantees that Kyiv officials view as vital – are still to be worked out, Mr Shmyhal said on Ukrainian public television.
A preliminary economic agreement between Ukraine and the United States would ensure long-term U.S. involvement in rebuilding the country, but the deal leaves the question of security guarantees sought by Kyiv to future negotiations.
The agreement comes after two weeks of back-and-forth between Kyiv and Washington over how the U.S. could gain access to Ukraine’s natural resources. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has insisted that specific assurances for Ukrainian security must accompany a deal on those resources.
U.S. President Donald Trump planned to meet with Zelenskyy on Friday at the White House to sign the pact, which will closely tie the two countries together for years to come.
Read about what the deal says here:
French president Emmanuel Macron will go to London on Sunday at the invitation of prime minister Keir Starmer, the Elysee palace said on Wednesday.
It comes after it emerged that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is planning on visiting London for the talks.
An Elysee source said Mr Macron will attend a gathering of European leaders in London.
Starmer said earlier on Wednesday he will host leaders of Italy, Germany, Poland and other allies on Sunday to discuss their response to Donald Trump’s push for peace in Ukraine.
Political correspondent Millie Cooke reports:
The number of British personnel working on an international training program for Ukrainian soldiers has fallen by more than 1,000 in the last 2.5 years, new figures reveal.
The decline marks a 73 per cent reduction in the UK staffing of the British-led Operation Interflex that has trained over 51,000 Ukrainian soldiers to resist Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
It comes as Britain and its European allies scramble to bolster their own defences amid mounting pressure from Donald Trump and stark warnings about their defence capabilities.
Three years after Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion, Ukraine still faces a very uncertain future.
Just one month after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the US president has thrown whatever hopes Kyiv had for future American support into chaos.
In the last week alone he has launched repeated attacks on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, falsely branding him a “dictator” and wrongly accusing Ukraine of “starting” the war.
And so Ukraine now finds itself fighting a war on two fronts: the grind against the Russian invaders to the east, and the battle to keep Mr Trump on side to the west.
Here, The Independent looks at the very real costs of three years of war in Europe – financially, militarily and on the lives of the men and women who continue to fight for their freedom.
Alicja Hagopian and Tom Watling report:
Romanian prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation against pro-Russia former presidential candidate Calin Georgescu.
Georgescu was the far-right frontrunner in last year’s cancelled presidential election, a ballot which was cancelled due to suspected Russian interference in the 62-year-old’s favour.
Prosecutors have now launched an investigation amid accusations of wrongdoing ranging from campaign funding fraud and promoting antisemitism and hate speech to acts against the constitutional order.
After questioning Georgescu for several hours on Wednesday, prosecutors said they were formally investigating him on accusations of forming an antisemitic organisation, promoting war criminals and fascist organisations, and communicating false information.
Russian and US diplomats will discuss restoring their diplomatic missions in talks on Istanbul on Thursday, both sides said on Wednesday.
US president Donald Trump is reversing his predecessor Joe Biden’s policy of isolating Russia as he looks to rebuild ties with between the White House and Moscow.
The rapprochement began with a call between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on February 12. A high-level meeting between the two sides last week in Riyadh followed.
Delegations led by US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to discuss diplomatic missions while in Saudi Arabia.
Donald Trump has unofficially announced a 25 per cent tariff on goods from the European Union, accusing the bloc of being formed to “screw the United States”.
Speaking during his first cabinet meeting, the US president said: “The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States, that’s the purpose of it. And they’ve done a good job of it. But now I’m president.”
The president says his administration planned to impose tariffs on the EU “very soon”.
“It will be 25 per cent, generally speaking, and that will be on cars and all other things,” he said, adding that the EU is a “different case than Canada… they’ve really taken advantage of us in a different way”.
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Ukraine-Russia war live: Trump says Zelensky will sign minerals deal on Friday but US won’t guarantee security – The Independent
