By Tom Balmforth
KYIV (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent visited Kyiv on Wednesday to discuss a critical minerals deal as Ukraine vies to win the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump at a perilous diplomatic juncture in the war with Russia.
Bessent, the first cabinet-level official in Trump’s team to visit Ukraine, is certain to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskiy who has said he is open to a deal with Washington and hopes he can obtain U.S. security guarantees to end the war with Russia.
The visit came hours after Kyiv’s residents were awoken by a predawn Russian ballistic missile attack that killed one person in the city as the sound of explosions rang out.
Trump, who wants a rapid end to the bloodshed but has not said whether he will continue vital military assistance to Kyiv, has said he wants $500 billion in rare earth minerals from Ukraine and that Washington’s support needs to be “secured”.
Zelenskiy set out the contours of a deal in a Reuters interview last week, unfurling a map showing numerous mineral deposits and saying he was offering a mutually beneficial partnership to develop them jointly and not “giving them away”.
A U.S. source with knowledge of the matter said Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, would use the visit to discuss a strategic minerals agreement that would also include energy resources, energy assets and state-owned enterprises.
Those remarks could refer in part to another idea to use Ukraine’s vast underground storage sites to store U.S. natural gas for Europe, something Zelenskiy has said is being discussed by Kyiv and the White House.
The source said that an agreement would give the United States an interest in both the security and economic future of Ukraine.
The visit is a tangible sign of real U.S. interest in Ukraine that will be welcomed by an anxious Kyiv that is watching nervously at how the Trump team has been engaging with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Tuesday, Russia freed a U.S. prisoner after a visit to Moscow by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, the first known senior U.S. official to travel to Russia since before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The prospective minerals deal shows how Ukraine has rapidly reset its foreign policy approach to align with the transactional world view set out by the new occupant of the White House, Ukraine’s most important wartime ally.
‘TREMENDOUS PROGRESS’
Trump’s decision to send his treasury secretary before any other official was striking in a wartime capital that has been a revolving doors for Western security, defence and political officials over almost three years of war.
Bessent has pledged to ratchet up sanctions on Russia’s oil sector, a move begun by the Biden administration shortly before leaving office.
As fighting rages on in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has been advancing for many months, the visit is the first in a series of important diplomatic tests for Ukraine this week.
Also on Wednesday the Ukraine Defence Contact Group set up under former U.S. President Joe Biden to supply weapons to wartime Ukraine will convene for the first time since Trump took office, with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth set to attend.
Towards the end of the week, Zelenskiy is scheduled to meet U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference, which Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine is also due to attend.
Trump, who has said he has made “tremendous progress” towards a deal between Ukraine and Russia, has also said he expects to talk to Zelenskiy this week.
On Monday, Russia’s point man for relations with the United States said that all of Putin’s conditions must be met in full before the war in Ukraine could end, suggesting Moscow is playing hardball with Trump.
Those conditions include Ukraine dropping its NATO ambitions and withdrawing its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia, something Kyiv has likened to capitulation.
Zelenskiy has said his team are working to set up a meeting with Trump and that it is very important that happens before the U.S. president meets Putin.
Trump has indicated he has spoken with Putin but has been vague on the details. The Kremlin has neither confirmed nor denied that they have spoken.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth in Kyiv, Gram Slattery and Andrea Shalal; editing by Gareth Jones)
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