The US and Ukraine finally signed their minerals deal after amending the draft agreement to remove a proposal for Ukraine to pay back past US military aid. A clause was added though whereby future US military aid, including technology and training, is considered part of the US’ contribution to their joint fund. More weapons packages will likely be in the cards since the US now has economic stakes in Ukraine and the value of the aid that it sends to defend them can be counted toward their joint fund.
Such an arrangement imbues the US with more policymaking flexibility than if it had conceded to Ukraine’s demand for concrete security guarantees. Authorizing another weapons package at this diplomatically delicate moment in the peace process could spook Russia and thus lead to the talks’ collapse. At the same time, however, this deal will likely lead to such packages being authorized after a ceasefire on the pretext of defending US investments and contributing to their joint fund.
What this means in practice is that Russia shouldn’t expect the US to fully dump Ukraine in any realistic scenario from here on out. Trump just rewarded Zelensky for this agreement by “inform[ing] Congress of [his] intention to green-light the export of defense-related products to Ukraine through direct commercial sales (DCS) of $50 million or more” according to the Kyiv Post citing unnamed diplomatic sources. This signals his newfound interest in resuming DCS in lieu of large-scale weapons packages.
Although this sum is insignificant compared to the over $1.6 billion in DCS authorized between 2015-2023 that the Kyiv Post reminded their audience about, and nowhere near what the US Government directly provided since 2022, it still importantly hints at his calculations. If Trump comes to believe that Zelensky is responsible for the peace talks’ collapse, then he might continue to withhold weapons packages as punishment, but he could still green-light more DCS deals.
Likewise, if he comes to believe that Putin is responsible for this, then he might authorize large-scale weapons packages as punishment. Either way, US arms will likely continue flowing into Ukraine due to their amended minerals deal, with the only variables being the quality, scale, pace, and terms of these weapons shipments. This greatly complicates Russia’s goal of demilitarizing Ukraine, especially seeing as how the US will struggle to stop Europe from arming Ukraine no matter how hard the US might try.
Accordingly, Russia might calculate that it’s better to concede to Ukraine’s partial demilitarization given the difficulty of achieving its full demilitarization, but the threat that this poses could be managed by demanding a demilitarized “Trans-Dnieper” region controlled by non-Western peacekeepers. Even if that proposal isn’t agreed to, Russia might still push for geographic limits on Ukraine’s deployment of certain weapons, which would require a UNSC-approved monitoring and enforcement mechanism to work.
So long as Trump is sincere about reaching a deal with Putin, then he should agree to this compromise or a variation thereof to keep the peace process alive, otherwise Putin might find it politically impossible to approve of any agreement that entails abandoning his goal to demilitarize Ukraine. That’s essentially what’s at stake now given that the amended terms of the US’ minerals deal with Ukraine greatly complicate Russia’s attainment of this objective that’s among the reasons for its special operation.
