Af­ter months of tense ne­go­ti­a­tions, the U.S. and Ukraine signed a deal that is ex­pect­ed to give Wash­ing­ton ac­cess to the coun­try’s crit­i­cal min­er­als and oth­er nat­ur­al re­sources, an agree­ment Kyiv hopes will se­cure long-term sup­port for its de­fence against Rus­sia.

Ac­cord­ing to Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials, the ver­sion of the deal signed Wednes­day is far more ben­e­fi­cial to Ukraine than pre­vi­ous ver­sions, which they said re­duced Kyiv to a ju­nior part­ner and gave Wash­ing­ton un­prece­dent­ed rights to the coun­try’s re­sources.

The agree­ment — which the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment must rat­i­fy — would es­tab­lish a re­con­struc­tion fund for Ukraine that Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials hope will be a ve­hi­cle to en­sure fu­ture Amer­i­can mil­i­tary as­sis­tance. A pre­vi­ous agree­ment was near­ly signed be­fore be­ing de­railed in a tense Oval Of­fice meet­ing in­volv­ing U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance and Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy.

“We have formed a ver­sion of the agree­ment that pro­vides mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial con­di­tions for both coun­tries. This is an agree­ment in which the Unit­ed States notes its com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing long-term peace in Ukraine and rec­og­nizes the con­tri­bu­tion that Ukraine has made to glob­al se­cu­ri­ty by giv­ing up its nu­clear ar­se­nal,” Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Yu­lia Svyry­denko, who signed the deal for Ukraine, said in a post on Face­book.

The sign­ing comes dur­ing what U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio said would be a “very crit­i­cal” week for U.S.-led ef­forts to end the war that ap­pear to have stalled. Ukraine sees the deal as a way to en­sure that its biggest and most con­se­quen­tial al­ly stays en­gaged and doesn’t freeze mil­i­tary sup­port, which has been key in its 3-year-old fight against Rus­sia’s full-scale in­va­sion.

“This agree­ment sig­nals clear­ly to Rus­sia that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to a peace process cen­tred on a free, sov­er­eign, and pros­per­ous Ukraine over the long term,” Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Scott Bessent, who signed for the U.S., said in a state­ment.

Here is a look at the deal.

What does the deal in­clude?

The deal cov­ers min­er­als, in­clud­ing rare earth el­e­ments, but al­so oth­er valu­able re­sources, in­clud­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas, ac­cord­ing to the text re­leased by Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment.

It does not in­clude re­sources that are al­ready a source of rev­enue for the Ukrain­ian state. In oth­er words, any prof­its un­der the deal are de­pen­dent on the suc­cess of new in­vest­ments. Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials have al­so not­ed that it does not re­fer to any debt oblig­a­tions for Kyiv, mean­ing prof­its from the fund will like­ly not go to­ward the pay­ing the U.S. back for its pre­vi­ous sup­port.

Of­fi­cials have al­so em­pha­sized that the agree­ment en­sures full own­er­ship of the re­sources re­mains with Ukraine, and the state will de­ter­mine what can be ex­tract­ed and where.

The text of the deal lists 55 min­er­als but says more can be agreed to.

Trump has re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed in­ter­est in Ukraine’s rare earth el­e­ments, and some of them are in­clud­ed in the list, as are oth­er crit­i­cal min­er­als, such as ti­ta­ni­um, lithi­um and ura­ni­um.

What are rare earth el­e­ments?

They are a group of 17 el­e­ments that are es­sen­tial to many kinds of con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing cell phones, hard dri­ves and elec­tric and hy­brid ve­hi­cles.

Chi­na is the world’s largest pro­duc­er of rare earth el­e­ments, and both the U.S and Eu­rope have sought to re­duce their de­pen­dence on Bei­jing, Trump’s chief geopo­lit­i­cal ad­ver­sary.

They in­clude el­e­ments such as lan­thanum, ceri­um and scan­di­um, which are list­ed in the deal.

How will the fund work?

The agree­ment es­tab­lish­es a re­con­struc­tion in­vest­ment fund, and both the U.S. and Ukraine will have an equal say in its man­age­ment, ac­cord­ing to Svyry­denko.

The fund will be sup­port­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment through the U.S. In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion agency, which Ukraine hopes will at­tract in­vest­ment and tech­nol­o­gy from Amer­i­can and Eu­ro­pean coun­tries.

Ukraine is ex­pect­ed to con­tribute 50% of all fu­ture prof­its from gov­ern­ment-owned nat­ur­al re­sources in­to the fund. The Unit­ed States will al­so con­tribute in the form of di­rect funds and equip­ment, in­clud­ing bad­ly need­ed air de­fence sys­tems and oth­er mil­i­tary aid.

Con­tri­bu­tions to the fund will be rein­vest­ed in projects re­lat­ed to min­ing, oil and gas as well as in­fra­struc­ture.

No prof­its will not be tak­en from the fund for the first 10 years, Svyry­denko said.

Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials ini­tial­ly pushed for a deal in which Wash­ing­ton would re­ceive $500 bil­lion in prof­its from ex­ploit­ed min­er­als as com­pen­sa­tion for its wartime sup­port.

But Ze­len­skyy re­ject­ed the of­fer, say­ing he would not sign off on an agree­ment “that will be paid off by 10 gen­er­a­tions of Ukraini­ans.”

What is the state of Ukraine’s min­er­als in­dus­try?

Ukraine’s rare earth el­e­ments are large­ly un­tapped be­cause of state poli­cies reg­u­lat­ing the in­dus­try, a lack of good in­for­ma­tion about de­posits, and the war.

The in­dus­try’s po­ten­tial is un­clear since ge­o­log­i­cal da­ta is thin be­cause min­er­al re­serves are scat­tered across Ukraine, and ex­ist­ing stud­ies are con­sid­ered large­ly in­ad­e­quate, ac­cord­ing to busi­ness­men and an­a­lysts.

In gen­er­al, how­ev­er, the out­look for Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al re­sources is promis­ing. The coun­try’s re­serves of ti­ta­ni­um, a key com­po­nent for the aero­space, med­ical and au­to­mo­tive in­dus­tries, are be­lieved to be among Eu­rope’s largest. Ukraine al­so holds some of Eu­rope’s largest known re­serves of lithi­um, which is re­quired to pro­duce bat­ter­ies, ce­ram­ics and glass.

In 2021, the Ukrain­ian min­er­al in­dus­try ac­count­ed for 6.1% of the coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct and 30% of ex­ports.

An es­ti­mat­ed 40% of Ukraine’s metal­lic min­er­al re­sources are in­ac­ces­si­ble be­cause of Russ­ian oc­cu­pa­tion, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from We Build Ukraine, a Kyiv-based think tank. Ukraine has ar­gued that it’s in Trump’s in­ter­est to de­vel­op the re­main­der be­fore Russ­ian ad­vances cap­ture more.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) —