Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that a U.S.-Ukraine deal featuring “strategic minerals, energy and state-owned enterprises” has an “implicit” economic security guarantee.
“This deal is part of President Trump’s long-arc negotiating strategy for peace between Ukraine and Russia, and … let the Ukrainians get back … to … a peaceful existence,” Bessent told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“So, the first part of this is a partnership between Ukraine and the U.S. that involves strategic minerals, energy and state-owned enterprises where we set up a partnership and we are only looking forward,” he continued.
Bessent added later that the deal features “an implicit guarantee that if the United States of America is heavily invested in the economic future … I call it an economic security guarantee.”
“The more assets that U.S. companies have on the ground, the bigger interest that the U.S. has in the future of [the] Ukrainian economy doing well, the more security it creates for the Ukrainian people, and the … the higher the return for the U.S. taxpayer,” the Treasury Secretary continued.
Last week, Bessent went to Ukraine and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Security matters. Moscow and its allies cannot be allowed to gain control over Ukraine, and that means we must work together—across the free world,” Zelensky said on the social media platform X on the meeting with the Treasury secretary.
The New York Times has reported that U.S. officials have recently been angling in the direction of a proposal in which the U.S. receives half of all revenues from Ukrainian natural resources alongside earnings by way of ports and other infrastructure.
