How to assess the US-Ukraine mineral deal?
Prof. Glenn Diesen on CGTN & WION
I participated in discussions about the US- Ukraine mineral deal on China’s CGTN and India’s WION. There is a lot of ambiguity about the agreement, which could reflect the competing motivations of Zelensky and Trump. Zelensky is interested in creating economic incentives for the US to become entangled in the war, and he would like to obtain US security guarantees. As most of the resources are under Russian control, such an agreement could create economic incentives for Trump to push Russia back and relinquish territorial control. Furthermore, Zelensky is worried that both the US and Russia are challenging his authority as the legitimate leader of Ukraine and would like to use the deal to get Trump to reverse his position that Zelensky is a dictator. Trump has been reluctant to give security guarantees that could enable Zelensky to pull the US into a direct war with Russia. So far, it appears that Trump will take the resources that Zelensky offers without giving anything of significance in return. Furthermore, Putin’s offer to cooperate with the US on energy exploration outweighs any offer from Zelensky. The deal is a product of great pressure from Trump and great desperation from Zelensky.
There is too much hysteria about this particular issue, while in fact Ukraine has already been chewed up by foreign private ownership
For example well prior to the war in Ukraine, the privatisation of farmland in Ukraine - forced by the IMF and Witld Bank since 2009 - already meant that it was being bought up by US private equity firms and banks, the Norwegian government wealth fund, and Saudi businesses, with the European development fund, and other holding debt based secondary control of the assets
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/new-report-take-over-ukrainian-agricultural-land
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/war-theft-takeover-ukraine-agricultural-land
What’s going on here is Trump wading into to make grabs of Ukrainian assets to line his own pockets. His morally corrupt policies and likely corruption are not new at all. Nor is American corruption in Ukraine. It’s in Ukraine that Hunter Biden was collecting millions of dollars while having no relevant insight or expertise but having a personal family relationship that was veeeeery relevant to the Ukrainian oligarch paying him for doing nothing.
But the rape of Ukrainian assets by the west, and by USA specifically, is NOT remotely new. Nowhere is that information in the headlines.
The Duran boys brought up an important point: this vague accord effectively destroys any EU membership for Ukraine. At the same time, Zelensky's term ran out last year effectively delegitimizing any hypothetical peace agreement with Russia and now this mineral deal with the US. It is now clear: the real obstacle to peace is named Volodymyr Zelensky and his merry b and of crooks in Kyiv. What happened to those "lost" billions?