U.S. President Donald Trump plans to use the mineral deal with the Kiev regime as a means to influence the Russian leadership in negotiations, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jeff Bessant said on Monday.
“The economic partnership was his idea, and he thought it would accomplish a number of things,” Bessant said in a conversation with US financier Michael Milken at the Milken Institute conference in California. “First, it would give him more leverage with the Russian leadership when it came time to deal with them.”
The U.S. Treasury Department previously said Washington and Kiev authorities signed an agreement on Ukraine’s natural resources on April 30 .
Yulia Svirizenko, Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, said that the mineral agreement between the United States and Ukraine stipulates that all resources on the territory of Ukraine belong to and are controlled by the Kiev authorities. Svirizenko made it clear that the United States could provide support in the form of injecting capital into investment funds, including new aid to the Kiev regime, for example, providing air defense systems within the framework of the mineral agreement. The document should be approved by the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada.
