Ukraine is ready to sign an agree­ment that would give the U.S. ac­cess to its valu­able rare min­er­als in the hopes of en­sur­ing con­tin­ued Amer­i­can sup­port for Kyiv in its grind­ing war with Rus­sia, se­nior Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials said Wednes­day.

Ukraine’s econ­o­my min­is­ter, Yu­lia Svyry­denko, was in Wash­ing­ton on Wednes­day to help sew up tech­ni­cal as­pects of the deal, ac­cord­ing to two se­nior Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they weren’t au­tho­rized to dis­cuss the mat­ter pub­licly.

For Ukraine, the deal is seen as key to en­sur­ing its ac­cess to fu­ture U.S. mil­i­tary aid.

“Tru­ly, this is a strate­gic deal for the cre­ation of an in­vest­ment part­ner fund,” Ukrain­ian Prime Min­is­ter Denys Shmy­hal said on Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion.” This is tru­ly an equal and good in­ter­na­tion­al deal on joint in­vest­ment in the de­vel­op­ment and restora­tion of Ukraine be­tween the gov­ern­ments of the Unit­ed States and Ukraine.”

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in­di­cat­ed in Feb­ru­ary that he want­ed ac­cess to Ukraine’s rare earth ma­te­ri­als as a con­di­tion for con­tin­u­ing U.S. sup­port in the war. But talks stalled af­ter a tense Oval Of­fice meet­ing be­tween U.S. and Ukrain­ian lead­ers, and reach­ing an agree­ment has proven dif­fi­cult and strained re­la­tions be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Kyiv.

It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear if the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion was al­so ready to fi­nal­ize the deal Wednes­day.

The U.S. is seek­ing ac­cess to more than 20 raw ma­te­ri­als deemed strate­gi­cal­ly crit­i­cal to its in­ter­ests, in­clud­ing Ukraine’s de­posits of ti­ta­ni­um, which is used for mak­ing air­craft wings and oth­er aero­space man­u­fac­tur­ing, and ura­ni­um, which is used for nu­clear pow­er, med­ical equip­ment and weapons. Ukraine al­so has lithi­um, a key in­gre­di­ent in cer­tain bat­tery tech­nolo­gies, as well as graphite and man­ganese, which are both used in elec­tric ve­hi­cle bat­ter­ies.

Trump pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed a pro­posed min­er­als deal as re­im­burse­ment for the bil­lions of dol­lars in aid that the U.S. has giv­en to Ukraine.

Ac­cord­ing to Shmy­hal, the deal would es­tab­lish an equal part­ner­ship be­tween the two coun­tries. Fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to a joint fund would be made in cash, and on­ly new U.S. mil­i­tary aid would count to­ward the Amer­i­can share. As­sis­tance pro­vid­ed be­fore the agree­ment was signed would not be count­ed. Un­like an ear­li­er draft, the deal would not con­flict with Ukraine’s path to­ward Eu­ro­pean Union mem­ber­ship — a key pro­vi­sion for Kyiv.

Ukraine in­tro­duced new pro­vi­sions to the agree­ment aim­ing to ad­dress con­cerns that the ini­tial U.S. draft dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly favoured Amer­i­can in­ter­ests.

The Ukrain­ian Cab­i­net is ex­pect­ed to ap­prove the agree­ment’s text be­fore it is signed in Wash­ing­ton, af­ter which it would be signed by Svyry­denko. The deal would then need to be rat­i­fied by the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment be­fore it could take ef­fect.

The ne­go­ti­a­tions come amid rocky progress in Wash­ing­ton’s push to stop the war.

In Moscow, a se­nior Krem­lin of­fi­cial said Wednes­day that clinch­ing a deal to end the war “is far too com­plex to be done quick­ly,” as the U.S. labours to bring mo­men­tum to peace ef­forts and ex­press­es frus­tra­tion over the slow progress.

Mean­while, a night­time Russ­ian drone at­tack on Ukraine’s sec­ond-largest city of Kharkiv wound­ed at least 45 civil­ians, of­fi­cials said. The Unit­ed Na­tions re­port­ed that the num­ber of Ukrain­ian civil­ian ca­su­al­ties has surged in re­cent weeks.

Putin wants an­swers be­fore com­mit­ting to a cease­fire

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin backs calls for a cease­fire be­fore peace ne­go­ti­a­tions, “but be­fore it’s done, it’s nec­es­sary to an­swer a few ques­tions and sort out a few nu­ances,” Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov said. Putin is al­so ready for di­rect talks with Ukraine with­out pre­con­di­tions to seek a peace deal, he added.

“We re­al­ize that Wash­ing­ton wants to achieve quick progress, but we hope for un­der­stand­ing that the Ukrain­ian cri­sis set­tle­ment is far too com­plex to be done quick­ly,” Peskov said dur­ing his dai­ly con­fer­ence call with re­porters.

Trump has ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the slow pace of progress in ne­go­ti­a­tions aimed at stop­ping the war, which he claimed he could end with­in 24 hours of start­ing his sec­ond term. West­ern Eu­ro­pean lead­ers have ac­cused Putin of stalling while his forces seek to grab more Ukrain­ian land. Rus­sia has cap­tured near­ly a fifth of Ukraine’s ter­ri­to­ry since Moscow’s forces launched a full-scale in­va­sion on Feb. 24, 2022.

Trump has chid­ed Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy for steps that he said were “pro­long­ing” the killing, and he has re­buked Putin for com­pli­cat­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with “very bad tim­ing” in launch­ing dead­ly strikes on Kyiv.

Trump has long dis­missed the war as a waste of lives and Amer­i­can tax­pay­er mon­ey. Se­nior U.S. of­fi­cials have warned that the ad­min­is­tra­tion could aban­don the peace ef­forts if it sees no so­lu­tion. That could spell an end to cru­cial mil­i­tary help for Ukraine and heav­ier eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on Rus­sia.

US wants both sides to move faster

The U.S. State De­part­ment on Tues­day tried again to push both sides to move more quick­ly.

“We are now at a time where con­crete pro­pos­als need to be de­liv­ered by the two par­ties on how to end this con­flict,” de­part­ment spokes­woman Tam­my Bruce quot­ed U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio as telling her.

“How we pro­ceed from here is a de­ci­sion that be­longs now to the pres­i­dent,” she told re­porters, re­lat­ing a con­ver­sa­tion that she had with Ru­bio. “If there is no progress, we will step back as me­di­a­tors in this process.”

Rus­sia has ef­fec­tive­ly re­ject­ed a U.S. pro­pos­al for an im­me­di­ate and full 30-day cease­fire, mak­ing it con­di­tion­al on a halt to Ukraine’s mo­bi­liza­tion ef­fort and West­ern arms sup­plies to Kyiv.

Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov claimed Wednes­day that Ukraine had ac­cept­ed an un­con­di­tion­al truce on­ly be­cause it was be­ing pushed back on the bat­tle­field, where the big­ger Russ­ian forces have the up­per hand.

Dur­ing a brief­ing in Rio de Janeiro, where he was at­tend­ing a min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing of the BRICS group­ing, Lavrov al­so sug­gest­ed that Ukraine’s cease­fire promis­es weren’t cred­i­ble. Both sides have ac­cused each oth­er of break­ing pre­vi­ous truces. In­de­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the bat­tle­field claims wasn’t pos­si­ble.

UN says Ukrain­ian civil­ian ca­su­al­ties are on the rise

Mean­while, Ukrain­ian civil­ians have been killed or wound­ed in at­tacks every day this year, ac­cord­ing to a U.N. re­port pre­sent­ed Tues­day in New York.

The U.N. Hu­man Rights Of­fice said in the re­port that in the first three months of this year, it had ver­i­fied 2,641 civil­ian ca­su­al­ties in Ukraine. That was al­most 900 more than dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year.

Al­so, be­tween April 1-24, civil­ian ca­su­al­ties in Ukraine were up 46% from the same weeks in 2024, it said.

In this pho­to pro­vid­ed by the Ukrain­ian Emer­gency Ser­vice, emer­gency ser­vices per­son­nel work to ex­tin­guish a fire fol­low­ing a Russ­ian at­tack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednes­day, April 30, 2025. (Ukrain­ian Emer­gency Ser­vice via AP)

In this pho­to pro­vid­ed by the Ukrain­ian Emer­gency Ser­vice, emer­gency ser­vices per­son­nel work to ex­tin­guish a fire fol­low­ing a Russ­ian at­tack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Wednes­day, April 30, 2025. (Ukrain­ian Emer­gency Ser­vice via AP)

The Ukrain­ian air force said that Rus­sia fired 108 Sha­hed and de­coy drones at Ukraine be­tween Tues­day and Wednes­day, pre­dom­i­nant­ly at the cities of Dnipro and Kharkiv.

Al­so Wednes­day, the Ukrain­ian Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice claimed its drones struck the Murom In­stru­ment En­gi­neer­ing Plant in Rus­sia’s Vladimir re­gion overnight, caus­ing five ex­plo­sions and a fire.

The plant lo­cat­ed east of Moscow pro­duces am­mu­ni­tion ig­ni­tion de­vices, as well as com­po­nents and prod­ucts for the Russ­ian Navy and mil­i­tary avi­a­tion, a source at the agency told As­so­ci­at­ed Press. The source spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause he was not au­tho­rized to speak pub­licly about the at­tack.

The claim could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied. —KYIV, Ukraine (AP)

_______

Sto­ry by SAMYA KUL­LAB and HAN­NA ARHI­RO­VA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press