An agreement was signed this Wednesday, April 30, between Ukraine and the United States on the exploitation of Ukrainian minerals, oil and gas resources, after weeks of difficult negotiations.
A long -term expected agreement, but for what effect? The United States and Ukraine signed an agreement on Wednesday, April 30, an agreement on the exploitation of Ukraine’s mining resources, a document that has been in negotiations for weeks. If Volodymyr Zelensky praised a “truly equitable” text, the text remains a commercial agreement which leaves many questions about the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
For Claude Blanchemaison, former French ambassador to Russia and the United States, this agreement is a “real success of Volodymyr Zelensky”. First of all because “the agreement signed (Wednesday) in Washington recognizes that Zelensky is the legitimate president of Ukraine, while Donald Trump had a little doubt before, and he also recognizes that Russia is the aggressor”, which signs a deep change in the terminology of the American administration which now speaks of “large -scale invasion” by Ukraine by Russia.
But the agreement also marks a turning point in terms of image, according to the former ambassador. “We are at a key moment. Volodymyr Zelensky found the means in one month to reverse the situation in his favor, in any case to change the opinion of Donald Trump vis-à-vis him,” he explains to BFMTV.
“A month ago, Volodymyr Zelensky was mistreated in the White House Oval Office and today this agreement is signed,” he said.
“We went from the image of Zelensky who is humiliated to Washington in Zelensky to the Vatican who chats serenely with Donald Trump”, abounds the former officer and war columnist Guillaume Ancel in BFMTV.
A “trade agreement” and not of truce
More interesting for kyiv than in its first version, this text plans to give access to American companies to the extraction of minerals, oil and gas in Ukraine and the creation of a common investment fund between the two countries for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
For Oxana Melnichuk, Ukrainian political scientist and director of the association “UNIS for Ukraine”, one of the great positive points of this agreement is that “Ukraine keeps its property, that is to say that it is not the Americans who will have property on Ukrainian resources (…) and it is the Ukrainian state that will give the Americans”.
However, Guillaume Ancel calls not to scream victory too early. “We are not talking about a cease-fire agreement, we are talking about a commercial agreement,” he recalls. This also implies that the document does not provide for a security guarantee for kyiv, a point on which the Ukrainian president had insisted, enough to question the continuation of the conflict.
“Long -term American interest in Ukraine”
While keeping a “reserved optimism”, Oxana Melnichuk believes that this trade agreement could still have positive consequences for the war in Ukraine.
“Americans will now defend Ukrainian soil because they are future resources,” she wants to believe.
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“Trump has changed his attitude,” she said, stressing that now the American president no longer evokes a Ukrainian debt contracted with the United States, “he speaks of potential income thanks to investments in Ukraine and Ukraine is already considered the (financial) partner”.
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Robert B. Murrett, professor of public administration and international affairs at the University of Syracuse in the United States, also supports, with the France-Presse agency, that this agreement is necessarily “positive, in the sense that it gives the United States long-term interest in Ukraine”.
New military aid?
This agreement may also have started a revival of American military aid in Ukraine. Indeed, according to diplomatic sources at the Kyiv Post, also relayed by Times and The Guardian, the Trump administration announced to the US Congress that it intended to give the green light to a new envelope of $ 50 million in military equipment to Ukraine.
If this aid is not official for the time being, it would be, if it was confirmed, of the first envelope for kyiv to be validated by the new president, when in recent months, American deliveries came from agreements signed by former American head of state Joe Biden, and while Donald Trump had suspended all aid to kyiv. What potentially relieves the short -term future of Ukraine.
In parallel, the fighting continues on the ground, despite the agreement. Fourteen people were injured Thursday evening in a Russian attack on Zaporijjia, nine of which were hospitalized, according to Ivan Fedorov, governor of this region. A few hours earlier, two people had been killed in a drone attack on a residential area in Odessa.
The Russian response in suspense
In addition, the Russian question remains unanswered. What answer will make Moscow to this agreement, when Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump had brought together in recent months?
“Vladimir Putin is in difficulty, because Vladimir Putin does not want to break up with Trump, he wants to keep his good graces”, judge Claude Blanchemaison, ex ambassador of France to Russia and the United States.
For the time being, the Russian president has not reacted, when he proposed a simple unilateral ceasefire from May 8 to 10 for the commemorations of the Russian victory against Nazi Germany in 1945. Dimitri Medvedev, former Russian head of state today vice-president of the Security Council of Russia, said that the agreement was not a victory for Ukraine not recognize a failure for his country.
“Donald Trump has broken the kyiv regime to the point that the latter will have to pay American aid with mineral resources,” he said on Telegram, “says Reuters. “From now on, they (Ukrainians) will have to pay military supplies with the national wealth of an endangered country,” he said.
For the Air Force General Patrick Dutartre, Russia cannot remain without reacting. “The ball is in Putin’s camp, it will have to do something because otherwise it would lose a lot,” he judges on BFMTV.
